Flow block: Get customer input
Description
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It plays a prompt to get a response from the customer. For example, "For Sales, press one. For Support, press two."
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When customers enter DTMF input (touch-tone keypad or telephone input), the prompt is interruptible.
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When an Amazon Lex bot plays a voice prompt, customers can interrupt it with their voice. To set this up, use the
barge-in-enabledsession attribute. -
It then branches based on the customer's input.
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This block works for chat only when Amazon Lex is used. It gathers customer input only, not agent input.
Supported channels
The following table lists how this block routes a contact who is using the specified channel.
| Channel | Supported? |
|---|---|
Voice |
Yes |
Chat |
Yes when Amazon Lex is used Otherwise, No - Error branch |
Task |
Yes |
Flow types
You can use this block in the following flow types:
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Inbound flow
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Customer queue flow
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Transfer to Agent flow
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Transfer to Queue flow
Properties
The following image shows the Properties page of the Get customer input block. It is configured to play an audio prompt. It branches on DTMF input, and times out after 5 seconds if the customer doesn't enter anything.
Note
The Get Customer Input block does not currently support using a voice prompt from an S3 bucket with Amazon Lex V2.
For information about choosing a prompt from the Amazon Connect library or an S3 bucket, see the Play prompt block.
You can configure this block to accept DTMF input or a chat response. You can also configure it work with Amazon Lex; for example, a contact can be routed based on their utterance. To learn how to set up a Lex bot, see Tutorial 3: Create an IT help desk.
DTMF tab properties
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Audio prompt: Select from a list of default audio prompts, or upload your own audio prompt.
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Set timeout: Specify how long to wait while the user decides how they want to respond to the prompt. The maximum timeout you can set is 179 seconds.
Amazon Lex tab properties
Configurable time-outs for voice input
To configure time-out values for voice contacts, use the following session attributes in the Get customer input block that calls your Lex bot. These attributes allow you to specify how long to wait for the customer to finish speaking before Amazon Lex collects speech input from callers, such as answering a yes/no question, or providing a date or credit card number.
Configurable time-outs for chat input during a Lex interaction
Use the Chat timeout field under Intents to configure timeouts for chat input. Enter how long until inactive customers timeout in a Lex interaction.
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Minimum: 1 minute
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Maximum: 7 days
The following image shows the Get customer input block configured to timeout chats when the customer is inactive for 2 minutes.
For information about setting up chat timeouts when all participants are human, see Set up chat timeouts for chat participants.
Barge-in configuration and usage for Amazon Lex
You can allow customers to interrupt the Amazon Lex bot mid-sentence using their voice, without waiting for it to finishing speaking. Customers familiar with choosing from a menu of options, for example, can now do so without having to listen to the entire prompt.
Configurable fields for DTMF input
Use the following session attributes to specify how your Lex bot responds to DTMF input.
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End character
x-amz-lex:dtmf:end-character:[IntentName]:[SlotName]The DTMF end character that ends the utterance.
Default = #
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Deletion character
x-amz-lex:dtmf:deletion-character:[IntentName]:[SlotName]The DTMF character that clears the accumulated DTMF digits and ends the utterance.
Default = *
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End timeout
x-amz-lex:dtmf:end-timeout-ms:[IntentName]:[SlotName]The idle time (in milliseconds) between DTMF digits to consider the utterance as concluded.
Default = 5000 milliseconds (5 seconds)
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Max number of allow DTMF digits per utterance
x-amz-lex:dtmf:max-length:[IntentName]:[SlotName]The maximum number of DTMF digits allowed in a given utterance. This cannot be increased.
Default = 1024 characters
For more information, see How to use Lex session attributes.
Intents
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Enter the intents you created in Amazon Lex. They are case sensitive!
The following image shows two intents in the Intents section: PasswordReset and NetworkIssue.
Configuration tips
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This topic explains some of the session attributes available for the integration with Amazon Lex. For a list of all the available Amazon Lex session attributes, see Configuring timeouts for capturing user input.
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When you use text, either for text-to-speech or chat, you can use a maximum of 3,000 billed characters (6,000 total characters).
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Amazon Lex bots support both spoken utterances and keypad input when used in a flow.
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For both voice and DTMF, there can be only one set of session attributes per conversation. Following is the order of precedence:
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Lambda provided session attributes: Overrides to session attributes during customer Lambda invocation.
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Amazon Connect console provided session attributes: Defined in the Get customer input block.
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Service defaults: These are used only if no attributes are defined.
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You can prompt contacts to end their input with a pound key # and to cancel it using the star key *. When you use a Lex bot, if you don't prompt customers to end their input with #, they will end up waiting five seconds for Lex to stop waiting for additional key presses.
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To control time-out functionality, you can use Lex session attributes in this block, or in set them in your Lex Lambda function. If you choose to set the attributes in a Lex Lambda function, the default values are used until the Lex bot is invoked. For more information, see Using Lambda Functions in the Amazon Lex Developer Guide.
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When you specify one of the session attributes described in this article, you can use wildcards. They let you set multiple slots for an intent or bots.
Following are some examples of how you can use wildcards:
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To set all slots for a specific intent, such as PasswordReset, to 2000 milliseconds:
Name =
x-amz-lex:max-speech-duration-ms:PasswordReset:*Value = 2000
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To set all slots for all bots to 4000 milliseconds:
Name =
x-amz-lex:max-speech-duration-ms:*:*Value = 4000
Wildcards apply across bots but not across blocks in a flow.
For example, you have a Get_Account_Number bot. In the flow, you have two Get customer input blocks. The first block sets the session attribute with a wildcard. The second one doesn't set the attribute. In this scenario, the change in behavior for the bot applies only to the first Get customer input block, where the session attribute is set.
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Because you can specify that session attributes apply to the intent and slot level, you can specify that the attribute is set only when you're collecting a certain type of input. For example, you can specify a longer Start Silence Threshold when you're collecting an account number than when you're collecting a date.
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If DTMF input is provided to a Lex bot using Amazon Connect, the customer input is made available as a Lex request attribute. The attribute name is
x-amz-lex:dtmf-transcriptand the value can be a maximum of 1024 characters.Following are different DTMF input scenarios:
Customer input DTMF transcript [DEL]
[DEL]
[END]
[END]
123[DEL]
[DEL]
123[END]
123
Where:
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[DEL] = Deletion character (Default is * )
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[END] = End character (Default is # )
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Problems with DTMF input?
Let's say you have the following scenario with two contacts flows, each one capturing DTMF input from customers:
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One flow uses the Get customer input block to request DTMF input from customers.
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After the DTMF input is entered, it uses the Transfer to flow block to move the contact to the next contact flow.
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In the next flow, there's a Store customer input block to get more DTMF input from the customer.
There's setup time between the first and second flows. This means if the customer enters DTMF input very quickly for the second flow, some of the DTMF digits might be dropped.
For example, the customer needs to press 5, then wait for a prompt from the second flow, then type 123. In this case, 123 is captured without problem. However, if they don't wait for the prompt and enter 5123 very quickly, the Store customer input block may capture only 23 or 3.
To guarantee the Store customer input block in second contact flow captures all of the digits, the customer needs to wait for the prompt to be played, and then enter their type DTMF input.
Configured block
The following image shows an example of what this block looks like when it is configured. It shows two branches for DTMF input: Pressed 1 and Pressed 2. It also shows branches for Timeout, Default, and Error.
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Timeout: What to do when the time in the Set timeout property has elapsed.
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Default: What to do if a customer enters a value other than 1 or 2.
Sample flows
Amazon Connect includes a set of sample flows. For instructions that explain how to access the sample flows in the flow designer, see Sample flows. Following are topics that describe the sample flows which include this block.
Scenarios
See these topics for scenarios that use this block:
