Amazon Connect launches the ability to initiate outbound SMS contacts

Amazon Connect now supports the ability to initiate outbound SMS contacts, enabling you to help increase customer satisfaction by engaging your customers on their preferred communication channel. You can now deliver proactive SMS experiences for scenarios such as post-contact surveys, appointment reminders, and service updates, allowing customers to respond at their convenience. Additionally you can offer customers the option to switch to SMS while waiting in a call queue, eliminating their hold time. To get started, add the new Send message block to a contact flow or use the new StartOutboundChatContact API to initiate outbound SMS contacts. This feature is available in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (London). To learn more and get started, please refer to the documentation for the [Send message](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/send-message.html) flow block and [StartOutboundChatContact](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/APIReference/API%5FStartOutboundChatContact.html) API.