AWS Connect Chat Activity Test

Amazon Connect Chat allows you to create customized experiences for your customers by enabling you to subscribe to a real-time stream of chat messages. It enables your customers to start chatting with contact center agents from any of your business applications for e.g., web or mobile. You can build automated interactions for your customers using contact flows and reuse them across voice and chat channels. Just like with voice channel, Amazon Lex is natively integrated within contact flows for chat, enables you to add Natural Language Understanding (NLU) powered chatbots to your conversations. The conversation context and transcript can be shared across agents and channels, giving your customers the freedom to move seamlessly without forcing them to start all over again or to wait for an agent. Chat activities integrate into your existing contact center flows and the automation that you built for voice.

At times, hundreds of customers may contact the target Amazon Connect contact center to resolve a particular intent through chat channels. An intent is an action the customer wants to perform. During such times, the agents handling the intent through chat channels should be able to resolve the customer queries on that intent within the specified time duration. This will help the contact center consistently maintain the user experience at peak. To ensure a consistently high user experience, it is essential to monitor the performance of the agents handling the intents through chat channels. The AWS Connect Chat Activity Test helps administrators in this regard!

This test auto-discovers the intents that the customers want to resolve by contacting the agents through chat channels in the target Amazon Connect instance, and for each intent, this test reports the count of available agents, agents in error state, non-productive state etc. Using this test, administrators can figure out the intent that has been frequently handled by the agents and in the process, figure out how well the performance of the agents is while handing the intent. If the performance of the agents suffers while handling each intent, administrators can analyze if it is due to too many agents in error state? or is it due to too many agents being non-productive? or is it due to too many contacts contacting the contact center for the same intent? or is it due to unavailability of slots for handling each intent?

Target of the test : An Amazon Connect Contact center

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each intent handled through the chat channel of the target AWS Connect that is to be monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the Amazon Connect that is being monitored.
Port	Specify the port number at which the specified HOST listens. By default, this is NULL.
AWS Access Key, AWS Secret Key, Confirm AWS Access Key, Confirm AWS Secret Key	To monitor an Amazon Connect instance, the eG agent has to be configured with the access key and secret key of a user with a valid AWS account. For this purpose, we recommend that you create a special user on the AWS cloud, obtain the access and secret keys of this user, and configure this test with these keys. The procedure for this has been detailed in the Obtaining an Access key and Secret key topic. Make sure you reconfirm the access and secret keys you provide here by retyping it in the corresponding Confirm text boxes.
AWS Default Region	This test uses Amazon Connect CLI to interact with AWS and pull relevant metrics. To enable the test to connect to AWS, you need to configure the test with the name of the region to which all requests for metrics should be routed, by default. Specify the name of this AWS Default Region, here.
AWS Instance ID	Specify a unique identifier for each instance created by Amazon Connect Note: To monitor multiple instances of Amazon Connect, each instance should be added as a separate Amazon Connect component in eG and assigned a unique nick name. When configuring tests for the component, you need to make sure that the specific Amazon Connect instance to be monitored is indicated using the Instance ID parameter.
Timeout	Specify the maximum duration (in seconds) for which the test will wait for a response from the server. The default is 10 seconds.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Agents on after call work state	Indicates the number of agents working in AfterContactWork state for this intent for chat channel.	Number	When a conversation between an agent and a contact end, the agent is automatically allocated to do After Contact Work for the contact. This includes updating the system, logging the reason for contact and outcome, updating colleagues, and scheduling follow-up actions. Compare the value of this measure across the intents to identify an intent for which maximum number of agents are working in AfterContactWork state.
Agents available	Indicates the number of agents who are available to take an inbound contact for this intent.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure is preferred to be high.
Agents error	Indicates the number of agents, who are currently working for this intent, in error state.	Number	The value of this measure is desired to be zero.
Agents non productive	Indicates the number of agents who have set a custom status in CCP, while working on this intent.	Number	Agents use the Amazon Connect Contact Control Panel (CCP) which is an exclusive website to interact with customer contacts. Using CCP, they receive calls, chat with contacts, transfer them to other agents, put them on hold, and perform other key tasks.
Agents on call	Indicates the number of agents who are currently on call with a customer for this intent.	Number
Agents on contact	Indicates the number of agents who are currently handling a contact for this intent..	Number	In Amazon Connect, each interaction with a customer is a contact. The interaction can be a phone call (voice), a chat, or an automated interaction using an Amazon Lex bot. Each contact can have some data that is specific to a particular interaction. This data can be accessed as a contact attribute. For example: The name of the customer The name of the agent The channel used for the contact such as phone or chat, and more. An agent is considered to be in “On contact” status when he/she is handling at least one contact who is either connected, on hold, in After contact work, or outbound ring.
Agents allocated	Indicates the number of agents allocated for this intent who have set their status other than Offline in the CCP.	Number	Contact Control Panel (CCP) is a website that the agents use to communicate with contacts. Agents can also customize their status such as ‘On Call’, ‘On Contact’ ‘After Contact Work’ etc., though the CCP.
Agents staffed	Indicates the number of agents who are online in the CCP for this intent, and not in Non-Productive Time (a custom status).	Number	There are two scenarios in which this measure is not incremented: The agent's status in the CCP is set to Offline. The agent's status in the CCP is set to a custom status. For example, let's say an agent sets his/her status in the CCP to a custom status such as Break and he/she makes an outbound call. Now, the agent"s status is set to “On call”, but Staffed value is 0. If the agent sets his/her status in the CCP to Available and makes an outbound call, the agent's status is set to On call and Staffed value is 1.
Contacts in queue	Indicates the number of contacts that are currently in the queue for this intent.	Number	A sudden/gradual increase in the value of this measure indicates an influx of customer queries to the contact center. A persistently high value for this measure is an indication for the business owning the contact center to right-size the contact center with adequate number of agents to handle the contacts.
Contacts scheduled	Indicates the number of contacts who have scheduled a call back with the agent for this intent.	Number
Oldest contact age	Indicates the maximum time that the contact waited in queue for this intent.	Seconds	Compare the value of this measure across all the intents to find out an intent for which the contacts waited in the queue for longer time. A high value for this measure is an indication that all the agents of the contact center for an intent are busy.
Slots active	Indicates the number of active slots for this intent.	Number	A slot is where an agent can either connect to a contact on call or connect to concurrent contacts via chats. This value indicates the number of active slots for an intent that the agent is engaged in.
Slots available	Indicates the number of available slots through which an agent routes contacts to resolve this intent.	Number	Slots are allocated for an agent based on his/her routing profile. For example, let's say an agent's routing profile specifies he/she can handle either one voice contact or up to three chat contacts simultaneously. If he/she is currently handling one chat, they have two available slots left, not three. A slot is considered unavailable when: A contact in the slot is: connected to the agent, in After Contact Work, inbound ringing, outbound ringing, missed, or in an error state. A contact in the slot is connected to the agent and on hold. Amazon Connect doesn't count an agent's slots when: The agent has set their status in the CCP to a custom status, such as Break or Training. Amazon Connect doesn't count these slots because agents can't take inbound contacts when they've set their status to a custom status. The agent can't take contacts from that channel per their routing profile.