Amazon Connect
Amazon Connect is AWS's cloud contact-center-as-a-service product, and it is the underlying telephony platform that Salesforce Service Cloud Voice was originally built on.
Definition
Amazon Connect is AWS's cloud contact-center-as-a-service product, and it is the underlying telephony platform that Salesforce Service Cloud Voice was originally built on. When a customer dials a Service Cloud Voice number, the call routes through Amazon Connect's PSTN gateway and speech-to-text pipeline, then surfaces in the Salesforce Service Console as a structured Voice Call record with live transcript and AI assistance. The Salesforce-AWS partnership turned Amazon Connect into a first-party telephony option for Salesforce customers without forcing them to manage AWS configuration directly.
Salesforce sells Service Cloud Voice in three editions: with Amazon Connect (Salesforce owns the AWS configuration), Partner Telephony (the customer uses a separate telephony provider via the Voice Adapter framework), and Bring Your Own Amazon Connect (the customer owns their AWS account and Salesforce talks to it). The Amazon Connect edition remains the most common because it requires the least configuration on the customer's side. Service Cloud Voice rides Connect's IVR, queuing, recording, and transcription, plus Salesforce's CRM integration, agent UI, and Omni-Channel routing on top.
How Amazon Connect powers Salesforce Service Cloud Voice
What Amazon Connect provides on the AWS side
Amazon Connect is a fully-managed contact center on AWS. It handles inbound and outbound PSTN, SIP trunks, an IVR builder called Contact Flows, queuing, real-time and historical analytics, and integration with the rest of the AWS stack (Lex for natural language, Polly for text-to-speech, Lambda for custom logic). On its own, Connect is a standalone product used by AWS customers without Salesforce. Salesforce Service Cloud Voice wraps it for Salesforce-centric use.
The Salesforce-AWS partnership and the three editions
Voice with Amazon Connect bundles a Connect instance provisioned by Salesforce. Bring Your Own Amazon Connect (BYOAC) lets a customer keep their existing Connect tenant and connect it to Salesforce. Partner Telephony replaces Connect entirely with another telephony platform through the Voice Adapter framework. The choice depends on the customer's existing telephony footprint and how much AWS expertise they have in-house.
Call routing from the Connect IVR to Omni-Channel
An inbound call hits the Connect Contact Flow first. The IVR collects intent or account number, optionally calls a Lambda to look up the caller, then either resolves the call in self-service or hands off to a Salesforce queue. The handoff routes the call through Salesforce Omni-Channel, which assigns it to an available human Agent with the right skills. The Agent sees the call inside the Service Console with the related Account, Contact, and prior cases already loaded.
Real-time transcription and Einstein Conversation Insights
Connect streams audio through Amazon Transcribe in real time. Salesforce ingests the transcript and surfaces it next to the Voice Call record. Einstein Conversation Insights analyses the transcript live, flagging mentioned products, competitor names, and call sentiment. Reply Recommendations and Next Best Action can suggest Knowledge articles or actions to the Agent based on what the customer just said.
Recording and storage
Connect records calls to AWS S3 by default. Salesforce stores transcript and call metadata as Voice Call records, with the audio referenced via a secured URL. Retention policy is configurable on both sides: AWS controls audio retention, Salesforce controls Voice Call retention. Aligning the two windows is a common day-two task, especially when compliance teams require synchronised deletion.
Custom IVR with Amazon Lex and Contact Flows
Connect's Contact Flows are AWS's visual IVR designer. They support DTMF input, speech recognition through Amazon Lex bots, and Lambda integrations for any custom logic. Salesforce admins typically design the high-level routing themselves and ask their AWS counterparts to author the Lex bots. The Bring Your Own Amazon Connect edition is the path for orgs that need full Contact Flow control.
Limits and shared responsibility
Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect uses Salesforce-provisioned AWS resources. Salesforce owns the Connect instance lifecycle, billing, and most of the configuration surface. The customer still configures Contact Flows, hours of operation, queues, and phone numbers. With BYOAC the responsibility flips: the customer owns the Connect instance and Salesforce just integrates with it. The shared-responsibility split matters during incidents; logs may live on either side.
Migrating between editions
Migrations between Voice editions are possible but non-trivial. Switching from Partner Telephony to Amazon Connect means reconfiguring routing, porting phone numbers, and retraining Agents on the new console behaviour. Switching from Voice with Amazon Connect to BYOAC requires re-pointing Salesforce at a customer-owned AWS account. Plan migrations as a months-long project, not a config flip.
How to set up Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect
Provisioning the Amazon Connect edition is mostly clicks in Salesforce Setup with a few hours of Contact Flow design on the AWS side. The complexity scales with how custom the IVR and routing need to be.
- Enable Service Cloud Voice
Setup, Service Setup, Service Cloud Voice. Confirm the licence and any required permission set licences are visible. Walk the Voice Setup wizard.
- Provision the Amazon Connect instance
For the Amazon Connect edition, click Provision in Voice Setup. Salesforce creates the Connect instance in the right AWS region and pairs it with the org. Provisioning takes under an hour.
- Configure Contact Flows
Open the Connect admin console from the link in Voice Setup. Author or import Contact Flows. At a minimum, configure greeting, queue selection, and the Set Working Queue / Transfer-to-Salesforce-Queue blocks that hand off to Omni-Channel.
- Add phone numbers and pair queues
Claim phone numbers in Connect and attach them to the Contact Flows. In Salesforce, pair each Connect queue to a Salesforce Service Channel and Omni-Channel routing configuration.
- Assign Voice permissions and test
Assign the Service Cloud Voice permission set licence and permission set to Agents. Dial the configured number, walk the IVR, confirm the call lands with an Agent in the Service Console, and check that the transcript appears in real time.
- Contact Flow authoring is an AWS skill, not a Salesforce skill. Plan to involve someone with Connect experience for non-trivial IVR design.
- Phone number porting can take weeks. Order numbers and start porting early in any rollout.
- Audio retention is set in AWS S3; Voice Call retention is set in Salesforce. Mismatched windows surface as compliance gaps.
- The Voice edition decides who owns operations. With Amazon Connect, Salesforce Support is the first call; with BYOAC, AWS is in the loop too.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Service Cloud VoiceSalesforce Help
- Amazon ConnectAWS
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Amazon Connect.
- Set Up Service Cloud Voice with Amazon ConnectSalesforce Help
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Amazon Connect.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What does the Amazon Connect integration with Salesforce primarily provide?
Q2. Which packaged Salesforce product bundles Amazon Connect as the telephony layer?
Q3. What feature would you enable for real-time call transcription and sentiment analysis?
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