From legacy to AI-powered: Transform your customer experience with Amazon Connect Customer Competency Partners

By Lawrence Tse, Amazon Connect Customer Designation Owner – AWS 
By Yoona Lee, Applied AI Solutions GTM Acceleration Lead – AWS 
By Kelly Costlow, AWS Specializations Partner Program Lead – AWS 

Today’s customers expect seamless, personalized brand experiences at every touchpoint—but legacy contact centers fall short. They rely on queues, manual routing, and handle-time metrics as control mechanisms, with AI added as a separate layer rather than built in from the start.

The data confirms the business impact. According to PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey, 29% of consumers say they stopped using or buying from a brand due to poor customer experience, either online or in-person.

That’s why we’re excited to announce the Amazon Connect Customer Competency, which helps customers identify Partner solutions to transform their enterprise-wide customer experience on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This new AWS Specialization recognizes Services Partners with technical depth and proven success on Amazon Connect Customer—from migrating legacy contact centers to operationalizing AI at scale.

Amazon Connect Customer provides a unified, AI-native solution spanning voice, chat, email, SMS, and social. Teams shift from managing queues to building loyalty, with enterprise-grade observability to move AI from pilot to production with confidence.

This is the first AWS Competency directly aligned to an AWS service, launching with two categories that reflect the accelerating shift toward AI-native customer experiences: Contact Center Transformation and AI-Powered Customer Experience.

“Customer experience is shifting from reactive to predictive, and organizations need Partners who can move at that pace,” said Sara Caleffi, Director, Applied AI Solutions GTM at AWS. “The Competency gives customers the confidence they’re working with Partners who have the expertise to deliver that transformation at scale.” 

In this blog, we’ll cover the two categories, new benefits for Partners, and how to get started.

Competency categories

Amazon Connect Customer Competency Partner solutions are validated by AWS experts across two categories:

• Contact Center Transformation: Transform legacy contact center environments by migrating organizations from on-premises or cloud-based systems to a modern, AI-powered customer experience on Amazon Connect Customer. Deliver end-to-end transformation using structured methodologies from discovery through post-migration optimization, enabling AI features as part of the migration to drive measurable improvement over the legacy environment.
• AI-Powered Customer Experience: Design, build, and operate intelligent customer experiences using Amazon Connect Customer’s AI capabilities, including autonomous AI agents, conversational AI, agent and manager assist, and multi-channel self-service. Resolve customer issues at scale, augment human agents, and continuously improve outcomes through AI-driven insights while maintaining rigorous governance, observability, and testing practices.

New benefits for Amazon Connect Customer Competency Partners

We’re increasing our investment in Partners’ success through the following key initiatives:

• Additional Marketing Development Funds – Receive $50K in Marketing Development Funds (MDF) in 2026 and 2027 for achieving the Amazon Connect Customer Competency.
• AWS Migration Acceleration Program funding – Unlock funding to offset customer migration costs.
• AWS PartnerEquip: Live Amazon Connect Track – Access strategic and confidential content, including product roadmaps, feature release previews, and demos, as part of the AWS PartnerEquip event series. To attend live events in your region or tune in virtually, register for an upcoming session.
• Signature benefits – Receive dedicated co-selling support, private strategy sessions, and AWS guest speaker support at Partner-led customer events.

To learn more, review the AWS Specialization Program Benefits Guide in AWS Partner Central (login required).

Launch Partners

The AWS Competency Program is designed to highlight AWS Partners who have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in specialized solution areas.

We invite you to explore the following Amazon Connect Customer Competency launch Partner solutions recommended by AWS:

Contact Center Transformation 

Accenture
Caylent
Deloitte
Genpact
Infosys Ltd
NeuraFlash
NTT DATA Inc.
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Pronetx, Inc.
Salesforce
TTEC Digital
USAN
Zendesk

Success story

Partners are already helping customers close the gap between AI investment and measurable business outcomes on Amazon Connect Customer.

Pronetx helped New York Cancer & Blood Specialists replace 30,000+ manual calls monthly with an AI-powered contact center on Amazon Connect Customer—increasing patient enrollments by 54% in 8 weeks.

Read the full case study

Customers: Work with an Amazon Connect Customer Competency Partner

Amazon Connect Customer Competency Partners offer purpose-built contact center transformation and AI-powered customer experience services to help you modernize your customer experience operations—ensuring seamless, personalized interactions at every touchpoint.

Discover solutions and connect with validated Amazon Connect Customer Competency Partners or explore solutions listed in AWS Marketplace.

Partners: Become an Amazon Connect Customer Competency

AWS Partners looking to get their solutions validated through the AWS Specialization Program must be validated or differentiated members of the Services Path prior to applying. This AWS Competency replaces the Amazon Connect Service Delivery designation, which will be deprecated on June 1, 2027.

Ready to apply? Review the Specialization Partner Program Guide for instructions on how to apply in AWS Partner Central (login required).