AWS re:Invent 2025 - Transforming contact centers in financial services with Amazon Connect (BIZ220)

Transforming Contact Centers in Financial Services with Amazon Connect

Introduction

• The financial services industry is facing increasing competition, with customer experience as the new battleground
• Customers are demanding digital-first, personalized experiences, creating a "fintech paradox" for organizations
• Legacy contact center technologies struggle to deliver the intelligent, AI-powered experiences customers expect

Zeps' Journey with Amazon Connect

• Zeps, a fintech company with mobile money brands Sendwave and World Remmit, faced operational challenges as it scaled and merged its customer care teams
• Zeps partnered with AWS in 2023 to migrate its contact center to Amazon Connect and build innovative solutions
• Key projects included:
  • Migrating from Zendesk and Salesforce to Amazon Connect
  • Implementing AI-powered email solutions, multilingual chat, and intelligent call deflection
  • Automating case summaries and categorization to save agent time
  • Deploying AI-powered identity verification to streamline the customer experience

Impact and Lessons Learned

• Zeps saw a 51% decrease in voice contacts and 33% decrease in chat contacts between 2024-2025
• Zeps built a 5-person internal team to work closely with AWS, enabling faster innovation
• Key lessons:
  1. Vision: Clearly define success and work backwards to deliver the desired customer experience
  2. Velocity: Move quickly, test, and iterate, being willing to roll back changes if needed
  3. Automation: Identify manual agent and customer tasks that can be automated

Looking Ahead: The Sendwave Wallet and Future Plans

• Zeps is launching the Sendwave Wallet, a new product that extends its financial inclusion mission
• Future plans include:
  • Improving automated customer surveys to enhance AI content
  • Implementing 24/7 voice AI assistance
  • Deploying live voice-to-voice agent translation

Amazon Connect's Agentic AI Capabilities

• Amazon Connect now offers "agentic AI" capabilities, allowing AI agents to:
  • Understand customer intent and context
  • Reason about the next best action
  • Take action by integrating with knowledge bases and third-party AI agents
  • Maintain memory of the customer interaction
• New features include:
  • Natural-sounding voice interfaces with Amazon Polly
  • AI-powered agent evaluation and insights
  • Agentic AI assistance to guide agents during complex interactions
  • Automated case summarization to save agent time

Key Takeaways

• Financial services organizations must prioritize customer experience to differentiate themselves in a competitive market
• Partnering with AWS and leveraging Amazon Connect's agentic AI capabilities can help contact centers transform their operations
• A clear vision, a focus on velocity, and a commitment to automation are critical to successful contact center modernization
• Zeps' journey demonstrates the significant impact that AI-powered contact center solutions can have on operational efficiency and the customer experience