Amazon Connect agent using a desk phone: if they miss an inbound customer call, it goes to their message bank and the flow is broken. Is there a workaround?

Thank you for providing all the details of your Connect setup. I agree that if your agents need to use their cell phone and are away from an web interface where they can control their availability, Amazon Connect is not the right solution for you. Connect was designed to use the CCP web phone signaling and media, with the added benefit of temporarily being able to forward calls to a "desk phone", as needed. However, this is not an optimal setup for your case. It is also a more expensive version since for each call you are paying for both the inbound call and an additional outbound call leg from Connect to the agent desk phone, in your case their cell. There is no solution that I see working in your scenario. The transfer to queue cannot prevent the call to be routed to the agent if the agent is in Available state on their CCP (regardless of whether the call needs to be forwarded out or not).

Can you describe more the agent setup and the desired customer experience before trying to go straight to the solution?

***An inbound call from a customer is routed to the first available agent's cell phone. If the first agent misses or declines the call, the call is routed to the second agent, then the 3rd and so on, looping back to the first one until the call is accepted. The issue we have is that if the call goes to the agent's message back, the flow ends. ***

1/ Why is the agent setup to use a desk phone? Is this a work-from-home setup or a sales use case where the agents are "on the road" and calls go to their cell? ***Agents are all 'on the road' on their cell phones and may not be available to take the call. ***

2/ Why are they not available to take the call, which leads to calls hitting their voicemail? Is it because they are already on a call or because they select the calls they want to answer? They may be doing other tasks

3/ What is the customer experience you want to offer? Does the customer need to speak to a specific agent (personalized workflow) or can any agent solve their problem? any agent can take the call

4/ How are you routing the call to the agent: is it via queue transfer or direct agent? The AI reply was timeout in the "Transfer to queue" block. If the call is not answered within the specified time, it can be routed to another agent or back to the queue. But I cannot get this to work, but still trying.

What are you using for your phone-system? With Cisco Call Manager, I make the voicemail timer longer than 20 seconds (for that particular agent) to get around this issue. Because the agent's desk-phone voicemail-timer is now longer than 20 seconds, Amazon Connect will route the call to a different agent (per the 20-second Amazon Connect timer) before hitting the desk-phone voicemail-timer.

Yes, there are a few potential workarounds to address this issue with Amazon Connect when an agent using a desk phone misses a call:

1. Adjust ring duration: You can modify the contact flow to limit the ring duration for agents. This can be done by setting a timeout in the "Transfer to queue" block. If the call is not answered within the specified time, it can be routed to another agent or back to the queue.

2. Use Amazon Connect's queuing system: Instead of transferring directly to an agent's desk phone, you can set up a queue for agents. This allows better management of call distribution and provides more accurate information about agent availability.

3. Implement a callback option: You can set up a contact flow that offers customers the option to receive a callback when an agent becomes available. This is particularly useful during high-volume periods and can help manage situations where agents might miss calls.

4. Leverage custom attributes: Use custom attributes to track agent status and availability. This can help prevent transfer attempts to agents who are already on calls or unavailable.

5. Modify the contact flow: Adjust your contact flow to handle scenarios where the transfer doesn't connect immediately. For example, you could set a timeout for the transfer attempt and then route the call to an alternative destination if the transfer isn't successful within a certain timeframe.

6. Use "Set routing criteria" block: In your contact flow, you can use this block to set specific routing rules. This can help ensure that calls are distributed more effectively among available agents.

While these solutions can help mitigate the issue, it's important to note that Amazon Connect doesn't have direct insight into the status of external phone lines or message banks. Therefore, some level of manual configuration and testing will be necessary to find the best solution for your specific setup. Remember to thoroughly test any changes in a non-production environment before deploying them to your live system.

Sources
Agent gets ringing sound in stead of getting busy or engage/beep sound when he makes a call while the customer is on another call. This is a Defect which needs to be addressed. | AWS re:Post
Route contacts to the last agent the customer interacted with on an outbound call. | AWS re:Post