When Connect was launched, many industry watchers, myself included, were sceptical that AWS could have any success in a market that’s filled with so many large incumbents. Four years later, AWS has had so much success that it’s legitimized itself as a contact center vendor, removing any doubts as to whether it is in the market for the long haul. The last update AWS provided was in early 2020, when the company claimed that about 5,000 new contact centers were created in March and April 2020. It’s worth noting that its customer list doesn’t consist only of small businesses because it has many massive contact centers such as Capital One, Intuit, Hilton Hotels, Rackspace, and Priceline.
How AWS is doing the disrupting
I’d be incorrect if I said that pricing was the only reason customers switched to Connect because the company has added dozens of features during the past four years. At Enterprise Connect, it announced the following new capabilities: It’s fair to say that AWS was a late entrant to the cloud contact center market and that almost always spells doom. In this case, AWS used a new pricing model to disrupt the industry and coupled that with massive scalability and a consistent drumbeat of new features to not only catch up but become a leader in this market. More to come, I’m sure.
