How to play a message to a caller telling them Number of contacts waiting in the queue

While I've never done this with Connect and I'll go into it at the end as to why, there does seem to be to ways to do this. Based on this link (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/get-queue-metrics.html) you do get "Count of contacts in the queue" (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/real-time-metrics-definitions.html#in-queue-real-time). The second method would be to create a lambda that hits the GetCurrentMetricData endpoint (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/APIReference/API_GetCurrentMetricData.html) and ask it to return CONTACTS_IN_QUEUE metric.

Now, why I highly recommend you don't do this or do it only in very specific cases. Callers will not have context on what 100 calls in queue or 2 calls in queue really mean. For example, 100 calls in queue when you have 100 agents and your AHT is 3 minutes means that the wait time will be under 5 minutes. And having 2 calls in queue when you have a single agent with an AHT of 5 minutes means that 10 minutes of waiting could happen. So telling your caller there are X calls in queue doesn't really give enough information to make an informed decision. If you're looking to deflect the call there are better ways of doing it and if you're looking to avoid the caller from holding and calling back later what about using callback to make that a lot more comfortable on the caller?

david

Have you tried this blog post? https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/contact-center/optimize-customer-wait-experience-in-queue-using-amazon-connect/. It provides a few best practices to optimize a caller’s time while in a queue, and in turn improve customer experience. These techniques include:

• Provide estimated wait time
• Set expectations that the customer’s position in queue will not be lost
• Provide an option to receive a callback
• Personalize music on hold
• Personalize messaging on hold,
• Collect information that expedites service
• Assist with performing self-service on a digital channel