- 01
Redesign contact flows around observed intents; never lift-and-shift the IVR tree
- 02
Dual-run telephony with a SIP bridge for regulated or high-volume estates
- 03
Decide whether Amazon Connect is the interaction system of record before integration build
Phase 0 — Discovery and estate inventory
Inventory every DID, queue, routing profile, IVR path, CRM integration, WFM feed and recording retention rule in the legacy estate. Most enterprises discover 20–40% of published numbers are dead or unrouted. Output: a numbered estate register with an owner per line, a contact-volume profile by intent, and a decommission list agreed with the business before design starts.
Phase 1 — Contact-flow redesign, not lift-and-shift
Legacy IVR trees encode a decade of workarounds. Rebuilding them node-for-node in Amazon Connect carries the debt forward. Redesign around intents observed in transcripts: a shallow disambiguation layer, Amazon Lex for natural-language capture, and Lambda-backed data dips that answer the caller before a queue decision is made. Output: flow designs with a containment target per intent.
Phase 2 — Integration and data plane
Screen pop, CTI, click-to-dial, dispositions and write-back to Salesforce, ServiceNow or Dynamics. Contact Lens for analytics, Kinesis streams to your lake, and S3 lifecycle rules that satisfy retention and legal hold. Decide early whether Connect is the system of record for interaction data or a producer into an existing warehouse — retrofitting that choice is expensive.
Phase 3 — Telephony cutover strategy
Three viable patterns: number-by-number port, SIP bridge with dual-run, and big-bang by business unit. Regulated and high-volume estates should dual-run with a SIP media bridge so both platforms can take traffic for the same DID during the window. Port in low-volume, low-risk number blocks first and hold a validated rollback per block.
Phase 4 — Agent enablement and CCP rollout
Agents lose minutes per contact for two to three weeks after any desktop change. Shorten it with a soft-phone sandbox, side-by-side shadow shifts, and a one-page disposition map. Track AHT by cohort daily and staff a floor-walker ratio of one per fifteen agents for the first fortnight.
Phase 5 — Hypercare, tuning and decommission
Two-week hypercare with a defect triage board, containment and CSAT tracked against the pre-migration baseline, and weekly flow tuning from Contact Lens intent data. Only decommission legacy once the number register is fully ported, recordings are re-indexed, and the finance owner signs the circuit termination list.
- Redesign contact flows around observed intents; never lift-and-shift the IVR tree
- Dual-run telephony with a SIP bridge for regulated or high-volume estates
- Decide whether Amazon Connect is the interaction system of record before integration build
- Budget explicit hypercare and a floor-walker ratio — AHT dips are predictable and recoverable
Questions leaders ask us
- How long does an Amazon Connect migration take?
- A single-site, single-language estate with light integration typically runs 8–12 weeks. Multi-region estates with CRM write-back, WFM and compliance recording usually run 4–7 months, with number porting the critical path rather than build.
- Should we lift-and-shift our existing IVR into Amazon Connect?
- No. Lift-and-shift carries a decade of routing workarounds into the new platform and forfeits the containment gains that justify the move. Redesign flows around intents observed in real transcripts, then implement.
- What is the safest telephony cutover pattern?
- A SIP bridge dual-run: both platforms can serve the same DID during the window, so you can move a number block, validate, and roll back within minutes if quality or routing regresses.
- What usually causes Amazon Connect migrations to slip?
- Number porting timelines with the incumbent carrier, undiscovered CRM integrations, and recording retention or legal-hold requirements that surface late. All three are discovery problems, not build problems.