Amazon Is Beefing Up Its Cloud Call-Center Tools as More Customer-Support Staff Work From Home

Among the five new tools are one that uses artificial intelligence to help agents answer questions almost instantaneously and one that aggregates information about the customer from disparate data sources. Another makes it easier for customers to authenticate themselves when talking to an agent. The new features will help customer-service agents who are working from home while managing an increased volume of calls about everything from changes to travel plans to inquiries about unemployment benefits, said Larry Augustin, vice president of business applications for Amazon Web Services. The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. "The idea is to increase productivity for the agent and increase customer satisfaction for people calling in," Mr. Augustin said.