Avaya to Amazon Connect Migration Revitalizes Contact Center Experience for Bloomin’ Brands

Client

Bloomin’ Brands: Restaurant Brand in North America

Bloomin’ Brands is one of the world’s largest casual dining companies, operating more than 1,450 restaurants across 46 US states, Guam, and 12 countries. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the company owns and operates a portfolio of well-known restaurant brands and serves customers across multiple markets worldwide.

Challenge

Legacy Contact Center Infrastructure Modernization

Supporting approximately 14,000 daily contact center calls and up to 20,000 customer interactions, the company modernized its contact center environment through an Avaya to Amazon Connect migration, improving scalability, resiliency, and operational efficiency.

The company operated a large-scale contact center environment on an on-premises Avaya-based platform. The core solution consisted of Avaya Communication Manager (CM) for call processing and agent routing, Avaya Call Management System (CMS) for reporting and workforce performance monitoring, and a dedicated call recording solution for compliance, quality assurance, and dispute resolution.

Avaya CM and CMS deployments were dependent on on-premises infrastructure, making it difficult to quickly scale agent capacity during seasonal demand spikes or business growth.

Expanding the environment typically required additional hardware, licensing, and complex configuration efforts, resulting in higher costs and longer deployment timelines.

This created a need for legacy contact center modernization and cloud contact center solutions that could support scalability, operational efficiency, and changing business and customer requirements.

Unified Customer Information Across Applications

The environment also had no integration with downstream applications such as ServiceNow. As a result, agents had limited access to customer information and workflows across the applications supporting customer interactions.

The existing environment made it difficult to improve operational efficiency, rapidly introduce new capabilities, and create a more engaging customer experience.

Business Continuity Was at Risk During Hurricanes

The solution was hosted in on-premises data centers in Tampa, Florida. Storms and hurricanes caused major damage to power and IT equipment at the data center, causing loss of contact center services and call recordings.

This created a significant risk to business continuity and operational resilience, particularly for critical customer support operations and call recordings required for compliance, quality assurance, and dispute resolution.

Solution

Modernized Contact Center Operations with Amazon Connect

To address the limitations of the existing Avaya Communication Manager (CM), Avaya CMS, and call recording environment, Hexaware performed a strategic migration to Amazon Connect with a dual-residency deployment architecture and integration with ServiceNow.

The Amazon Connect migration was designed to provide enhanced resiliency, regulatory compliance, scalability, operational efficiency, and an improved customer experience while reducing the complexity and costs associated with maintaining legacy on-premises infrastructure.

The cloud contact center migration provided a foundation for modernizing the contact center environment and supporting cloud contact center solutions.

The Information Lifecycle Management Framework Structured Data Management

The implementation put in place an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) framework to support the management of customer interaction data across its lifecycle.

The framework brought together call processing, call recording, call analytics, reporting, and retention requirements while supporting compliance, quality assurance, and dispute resolution.

The approach also enabled 100% call recording with 7-year retention and 99% call analytics data availability, creating greater visibility and control across customer interaction data.

AWS Services for the New Contact Center Environment

The solution used:

• Amazon Connect
• AWS Lambda
• Amazon DynamoDB
• AWS IAM
• Amazon S3
• Amazon Polly
• AWS Bedrock
• AWS AppFlow

ServiceNow Integration Streamlined Customer Workflows

ServiceNow integration provides streamlined workflows and faster access to customer information. Agents use a browser-based interface that simplifies daily operations, while AI-assisted tools for knowledgebase search reduce manual effort and improve productivity.

Dual Residency Improved Resiliency and Business Continuity

The dual-residency deployment architecture provides improved business continuity and operational resilience. Geographic redundancy reduces the risk of service disruption and helps maintain critical customer support operations during outages or regional incidents.

Benefits

70% Reduction in Contact Center Agent Effort, 99.99% Uptime, and More

Bloomin’ Brands modernized its contact center with Amazon Connect, improving agent productivity, visibility, business continuity, compliance, and scalability while introducing AI-powered capabilities.

70% Reduction in Agent Effort to Access Information
Agents use a browser-based interface that simplifies daily operations. ServiceNow integration streamlines workflows and provides faster access to customer information, while AI-assisted knowledgebase search reduces manual effort and improves productivity. The solution achieved a 70% reduction in agent effort required to access information.

50% Savings Through Amazon Connect Request Channeling

New features and enhancements can be deployed rapidly into Amazon Connect, enabling the company to respond more effectively to changing business and customer requirements. The company realized 50% savings by channeling requests through Amazon Connect.

99% Availability for Call Analytics Data

Real-time dashboards, automated reporting, call analytics, and sentiment analysis provide deeper insights into customer interactions and agent performance. The solution achieved 99% call analytics data availability.

New AI Capabilities for Greater Efficiency and Customer Experience

Amazon Connect introduced capabilities that were difficult to implement in the previous Avaya environment, including:

• Virtual agents
• Automated call summarization
• Conversational analytics
• Intelligent recommendations

These capabilities improve efficiency while creating a more engaging customer experience.

99.99% Uptime for Stronger Business Continuity

The dual-residency deployment architecture improves business continuity and operational resilience. Geographic redundancy reduces the risk of service disruption and helps maintain critical customer support operations during outages or regional incidents. The solution achieved 99.99% uptime.

100% Call Recording for Seven-Year Retention

The solution achieved 100% call recording with 7-year retention, supporting compliance, quality assurance, and dispute resolution.

14,000 Daily Calls Supported at Scale

The modernized contact center environment supports approximately 14,000 daily contact center calls and up to 20,000 customer interactions, while providing scalability and operational efficiency.

Summary

A More Resilient and Intelligent Customer Experience

For the people supporting customers every day at Bloomin’ Brands, the new contact center makes it easier to find the right information, work across systems, and respond with confidence.

With Amazon Connect, AWS, and ServiceNow integrated, contact center agents now have a simple browser-based experience with faster access to customer information and AI-assisted knowledgebase search.

The platform Hexaware built provides a foundation for continued innovation, allowing new capabilities to be introduced more quickly while supporting growing customer interaction volumes without the complexity of maintaining legacy contact center infrastructure.