About Block

Block, Inc. is an American technology company that provides financial services to consumers and businesses. The company leads the U.S. point-of-sale systems market. As of 2023, Block serves 56 million users and 4 million businesses, processing $228 billion in payments annually. The company’s original product, Square, is a point-of-sale system that helps businesses accept card payments and manage various operations like bookings, e-commerce, inventory, payroll, and banking.

Block’s other notable offerings include Cash App, a digital wallet that allows users to send, receive, and save money, invest in stocks and bitcoin, and access financial services.

Challenge

Block’s global salesforce, consisting of over 1,500 team members, relies heavily on AWS Contact Center (Amazon Connect) for handling sales interactions. While Amazon Connect’s Contact Control Panel (CCP) provided robust tools for sales operations, it was primarily accessible via desktop, limiting flexibility for sales teams working in the field or remotely.

Block needed a solution that allowed its sales teams to:

• Access Amazon Connect’s routing, analytics, and queues on mobile devices (iOS and Android).
• Maintain a consistent and secure calling experience, regardless of location.
• Extend functionality to include outbound SMS capabilities, enabling teams to connect with customers via text directly from their mobile devices.

Solution

To address these challenges, Block adopted Mobile Connect, a mobile solution for AWS Connect available on both iOS and Android platforms. Mobile Connect seamlessly integrates Amazon Connect’s powerful features into a mobile experience, ensuring sales teams can handle interactions on the go without compromise.

As part of the solution:

• Analytics, routing, and queue management from Amazon Connect were made available on mobile, ensuring a seamless, consistent user experience.
• A custom AWS Lambda function was developed by Block, enabling outbound SMS capabilities through Mobile Connect. Block integrated this solution with Amazon Pinpoint and AWS Lambda, allowing their sales teams to send SMS messages directly from the app, ensuring multi-channel communication with customers.

Results

By implementing Mobile Connect, Block achieved:

• Increased flexibility and productivity: Sales teams now handle calls and messages from anywhere, ensuring faster response times and improved customer engagement.
• Consistent experience: Mobile Connect delivers Amazon Connect’s analytics, routing, numbers, and queues seamlessly on mobile, ensuring the same tools and insights are available regardless of location to both the sales teams and the customers.
• Secure and scalable communication: Leveraging AWS infrastructure, Block ensured secure, reliable interactions that scale globally to meet the demands of its 1,500+ sales team members.
• Enhanced multi-channel communication: With outbound SMS capabilities powered by AWS Lambda and Amazon Pinpoint, sales teams can engage with customers via text directly from the Mobile Connect app.

Conclusion

By leveraging Mobile Connect and AWS services, Block enabled its global salesforce to stay connected and productive, no matter where they are. With the power of Amazon Connect now accessible on mobile, Block’s teams deliver a seamless, secure, and responsive customer experience worldwide.