Q&A: The Tools That Enable Enhanced Customer Service for SMBs

BIZTECH: What are some of the common pain points SMBs face related to customer experience?

SCHRIENER: Here’s the reality: SMBs want to deliver the same caliber of customer experience as the big players, but they’re fighting an uphill battle with fewer resources to do it. I see it all the time.

The most common challenge? Fragmented data. Customer information lives in disconnected systems — your CRM says one thing, your billing platform says another, and your support team is flying blind. Without a unified view of the customer, every interaction starts from scratch, and that creates friction your customers feel immediately.

Then there’s the infrastructure problem. Many SMBs are still running on legacy systems that weren’t built for modern customer expectations and, now more than ever, customers’ expectations are on the rise — meaning, SMBs need ways to keep up. Managing on-premises hardware and software eats up time and budget that should be going toward actually engaging with customers, not keeping the lights on.

And let’s be honest about the talent gap. SMBs rarely have deep technical teams to implement and manage sophisticated CX tools. When you’re working with compressed timelines and limited internal expertise, even well-intentioned upgrades can turn into sources of frustration rather than improvement.

The good news is that these are all solvable problems. The right technology strategy — one that meets you where you are — and partnering wisely can turn these pain points into competitive advantages.

EXPLORE: One small business improves customer service with a modern contact center.

BIZTECH: What kinds of technology solutions can address customer experience concerns?

SCHRIENER: This is where it gets exciting, because the technology landscape has shifted dramatically in favor of SMBs.

Purpose-built tools are the starting point. For example, Amazon Connect gives SMBs an artificial intelligence–powered contact center that brings enterprise-grade customer service capabilities — intelligent routing, AI chatbots, real-time analytics — without the enterprise-grade price tag or complexity. Amazon Bedrock lets SMBs build generative AI applications that understand customers’ needs. Quick Suite puts embedded analytics in your hands so you can make data-driven decisions fast.

But the tools are only part of the story. The cloud itself is an enabler. It lets you trade heavy capital expenses for variable, pay-as-you-go pricing. That’s transformative for an SMB. You’re not buying and maintaining complex hardware, you’re paying for what you use, when you use it.

On the data side, AWS can help an SMB build data lake house architectures that unify all of those siloed customer data sources I mentioned. Serverless options eliminate infrastructure management entirely. You can go from raw data to actionable customer insight without standing up a single server.

The key is that these aren’t all-or-nothing propositions. You can start with a few clear use cases — maybe an AI chatbot handling appointment scheduling or order status checks — and expand from there as you see what works and build your confidence. That flexibility is what makes this real for SMBs.

BIZTECH: What best practices should SMBs follow when upgrading their approach to customer experience?

SCHRIENER: I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t, and it comes down to a few things.

Start with clearly defining the problem and how you will measure that you solved it. Before they spend any time or money, SMB leaders would be best served by clearly defining the problem they need to solve and the measurements they will use. Once they have a clear problem, their attention should go to what data they have or need to solve that problem. Then, and only then, should the search begin for how to solve the problem.

Get leadership committed, and set aggressive goals. This isn’t a “we’ll get around to it” initiative. The organizations that move fastest have leadership driving adoption with clear, ambitious targets. Creating a culture with a sense of urgency matters.

Invest in your people. Technology without strong enablement and training becomes shelfware and the worst possible waste of time and money, which SMBs can’t afford. Foster a culture of innovation where your team isn’t just using new tools but coming up with new ways of doing things. Acknowledge that change creates uncertainty and meet that with empathy and clear communication about why it matters and how learning new capabilities is an investment in employees’ professional development.

You don’t have to build everything or anything in-house. Leveraging partners that have done this before can dramatically speed up not only delivery of value but also organizational learning. The AWS Partner Network has over 140,000 partners offering consulting, managed services and technology solutions.

Think a phased or iterative approach — a portfolio approach — not big bang. Prioritize which applications to move first so you gain cloud benefits quickly while informing how to move the rest. And most important: Focus on agility over just cost savings. The cloud lets you go from idea to implementation, orders of magnitude faster. That’s the real unlock.

DISCOVER: Using AI frees teams to focus on high-value customer interactions.

BIZTECH: How is AI helping SMBs improve customer experiences?

SCHRIENER: This is the topic I can’t stop talking about, because the transformation happening right now is remarkable.

AI-powered tools such as Amazon Connect are giving SMBs contact center capabilities that were unthinkable a few years ago. We’re talking voice assistants targeting 60% call deflection, real-time call analytics and agent assist features that give your human customer service team superpowers when they do engage with a customer.

GenAI chatbots are handling customer inquiries around the clock — not in a clunky, frustrating way, but in ways that actually resolve issues. Document automation through Bedrock is slashing manual processing time. The pattern I’m seeing is clear: SMBs are shifting from simple chatbot-style AI to full AI process automation that handles entire workflows.

But here’s what really gets me fired up: agentic AI. These are autonomous agents working on behalf of your team. They handle the repetitive stuff — appointment scheduling, order status checks and proactive outreach when something changes — and free your people to do work that piques their intellect and builds real customer relationships and value.

The important piece: This isn’t about replacing human judgment. It’s about amplifying human creativity. You define the boundaries — what agents can and cannot do — with guardrails and monitoring to ensure behavior aligns with intent. The result is your team spending more time on the meaningful interactions that build trust and loyalty. That’s the goal.

BIZTECH: Why is data important for customer experience, and how can SMBs ensure they’re capturing the right data?

SCHRIENER: Data is the foundation of everything we’ve been talking about, full stop. You cannot deliver personalized customer experiences without understanding your customers, and you cannot understand your customers without the right data.

What does “right” look like? You need to capture transactional, behavioral and interaction data through unified platforms. That means not just what customers bought but how they engaged with you, what questions they asked, where they hit friction.

The cloud makes this dramatically more accessible. You can build a centralized data lake that consolidates all your siloed sources, then query and analyze that data without complex pipelines or heavy infrastructure. AWS offers services that handle real-time data ingestion, transformation and governance, including role-based access controls so the right people see the right data.

The transformation here is that data goes from being a burden — something you’re drowning in — to a strategic asset that drives every customer interaction. That’s the game-changer for SMBs.

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BIZTECH: How can managed services help SMBs in their customer experience journey?

SCHRIENER: This one is personal for me because I’ve watched so many SMBs try to do everything themselves and burn out or fail.

Managed services eliminate what we call the undifferentiated heavy lifting — all the infrastructure management, security patching, compliance monitoring that’s necessary but doesn’t differentiate your business one bit. It lets you focus your limited resources on what matters: building applications and experiences that set you apart.

A great example is Detrack Systems, a delivery tracking platform out of Singapore. They handed off their DevOps and back-end security to AWS Managed Services, and their engineering team went from managing infrastructure to focusing entirely on product development and innovation, without hiring dedicated operational staff. Their COO put it simply: With the operational burden handled, the team could focus on what actually moves the business forward.

The AWS Partner Network extends this even further with over 140,000 partners offering consulting expertise, managed services and technology solutions. You’re not just getting tools, you’re getting access to people who’ve done this before and can accelerate your journey.

The bottom line: Managed services let SMBs punch above their weight. You get the expertise and operational excellence of much larger organizations while keeping your team focused on your customers. That’s the whole point.

READ MORE: Assess your readiness to modernize customer experience.

BIZTECH: Is there anything we haven’t touched on that would be important for SMBs to know?

SCHRIENER: A few things I think are critical: The future of work is already here. Looking ahead two to three years, managers will oversee both humans and AI agents. That’s not science fiction, it’s the trajectory we’re on right now. The uniquely human skills — critical thinking, creativity, communication and curiosity — become more valuable as automation handles the repetitive work. Invest in those skills today.

Trust is the barrier you need to solve for. As agentic AI becomes more capable, organizations need to implement guardrails, agent policies and evaluation frameworks. Humans define the boundaries. Humans can intervene. Architecting a trusted integration of AI agents and your employees is what makes the whole thing work; without it, adoption stalls and time and money get wasted.

Account for AI readiness honestly. I’ve seen a pattern where SMBs have strong AI interest but lack go-to-market readiness. That gap needs a structured adoption framework, not just enthusiasm. Start with clear use cases, build competency, then expand.

And finally, lead with empathy through this transformation. Your team may feel uncertainty about what AI means for their roles. Successful change management means acknowledging those concerns, investing in training and explaining clearly how this benefits them as individuals. AI liberates rather than replaces. These agents free us to do the work that matters most, including the meaningful customer interactions that no algorithm can replicate.