Partners to Benefit From 'Q,' AWS' Generative AI Assistant

We sat down with contact center experts at AWS to chat about its "Q in Connect" offering which is now generally available. While "Q" as a whole is in preview, it's AWS' contact center tool where "Q in Connect" first gets its time to shine.

AWS told us all about the generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant designed for contact center deployment, adding, that its goal is to help contact center agents come by the most accurate information. 

As the experts at AWS put it, Q in Connect "solves problems, generates content and takes actions using data/expertise in your company's information repositories, code, and enterprise systems."

We sat down with one such specialist who works on Amazon Connect. If you are unfamiliar with Amazon Connect, it's the company's scalable contact center solution. Connect, not to be mistaken for Amazon Chime, the company's enterprise collaboration tool, arrives out-of-the-box with most of what a contact center needs and requires minimal setup. 

AWS' Michael Wallace

Amazon Connect now leverages the apparent might of the company's generative AI assistant, Q, something we learned plenty about from the company's solutions architecture leader, customer experience (CX) for the Americas, Michael Wallace.

Monetizing on AI with Generative AI Assistant, "Q"

Related:Microsoft Adds Premium Functions to Copilot with Pro Version

For now, users can access a free trial of the tool for a limited time, but like its competition, Microsoft, and its Copilot offering, AWS has plans to monetize the tool. The generative AI assistant consists of two plans, one for $20 and the other for $25, per month, per user. Similarly, Microsoft charges $30 per user per month for its generative AI assistant, Cipilot.

Wallace said one of the goals of charging for the generative AI assistant, which he deems robust, is that partners can finally make money on AI.

Plenty of free artificial intelligence-fueled features exist, the kind already inserted into almost every contact center as a service, unified communications as a service and communications platform as a service offering on the market. 

"Partners will need help ensuring their data doesn't give biased answers, so the value to the partner doesn't happen on the front end with AI, but the back end," Wallace shared. 

This notion is something David Smith, founder and principal of InFlow Analysis, called "the elephant in the room" in a recent interview with Channel Futures.

"One of the ways partners can make money on AI in the future is by delivering adjacent services like data management," said Smith.

That comes down to ensuring data is not contradictory, aging, and in the proper format, meaning professional services are one path to channel partners seeing financial yields on AI. Customers, says Wallace, "often struggle to take this on," typically understanding they need AI but are ignorant concerning where to begin. 

Because Q in Connect is a paid service, channel partners who sell the generative AI assistant are in line to acquire recurring revenue under the Amazon service delivery program.

'It's About Accuracy'

Generative AI in the contact center is "about accuracy" for the customer, said Wallace. He added that there are more conspicuous advantages like happier employees and more delighted customers, which he contends go hand-in-hand. 

There are also key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be impacted, like faster customer query resolution times. 

A recent Gartner poll of 2,500 executives found that 38% of those executives said that CX and retention are the primary purposes of their generative AI investments.

"This, followed by revenue growth (26%), cost optimization (17%) and business continuity (7%)," Gartner wrote. 

The firm notes that generative AI has a fair share of upsides such as fresh revenue channels, long-term talent retention and overall process improvement. And by 2025, Gartner predicts that 30% of enterprises will have implemented what it says will be "an AI-augmented development and testing strategy." That's up from 5% in 2021.