LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN): Winning in the New Normal of C-Commerce

With the time and space opened up by these sophisticated automated experiences, agents can deliver sales, marketing, and customer care journeys marked by increased convenience and personalization for customers on the go. Such flexible and effective communication has caught the attention of more than 18,000 brands internationally who, as LivePerson clients, can serve their customers better than ever. Disconnected experiences, like searching through a website just to find a number to make a phone call for service, become a thing of the past.

"LivePerson has a world-class conversation data set and deep Conversational AI expertise, meaning our NLU is on par with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft when it comes to creating experiences for customers. We’ve built tremendous intellectual capital in the space, including many patents and a team of world-class data science and engineering talent," says Robert LoCascio, Founder and CEO of LivePerson. The company's data set is one of the largest in the customer engagement domain, and LivePerson uses its vast data, talent, and visionary approach to strategically think about the challenges between a brand and its consumers. "From new sales and marketing use cases that generate revenue to the customer care transformations we’re traditionally best known for, we continue to expand the possibilities for brands using our Conversational Cloud," states Robert.

Leaving a Lasting Impression through Instant Bots and Optimized Conversations

Reports suggest that close to 70 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned. The reasons include lack of personalization, choice, and the inability to learn the customer's actual intent. LivePerson's commitment to brand-customer interaction and deep domain expertise has allowed the company to continually innovate and improve its platform.

The company's Intent Manager is a real-time intent recognition and classification engine that analyzes consumers' purposes at every point in the conversation. Therefore, contact centers can instantly and automatically learn what customers want and take the appropriate action related to customer service, marketing, or sales. The tool routes conversations to the agent or bot best equipped to resolve them at high satisfaction levels. The decision-makers, be it an agent or a bot, can make critical decisions related to policies, processes, and products. LivePerson offers readymade intent models tailored for different industries, including telco, financial services, retail, airlines, and others.

Performance Optimizer is another LivePerson AI-powered tool, used to measure and manage the health of brands' conversational operations. In one self-service dashboard, Performance Optimizer allows brands to:

● measure critical KPIs for conversational experiences and provide actionable insights on performance improvement,
● easily track conversational performance against internal targets and industry benchmarks, and
● deliver robust executive reporting data with clear recommendations for improvement.

What's more, LivePerson turns call center agents, most of whom come from a non-technical background, into the “engineers” behind sophisticated chatbots. Agents can use LivePerson's Conversation Builder, the world's first all-in-one platform for building enterprise-scale chatbots, to turn themselves into AI-skilled powerhouses. The platform's easy-to-use interface features a guided assistant and a point-and-click UI, as well as user personas for access levels and interfaces. It also includes out-of-the-box integrations and prebuilt automations for a variety of verticals. All these functionalities allow frictionless building, testing, visualization, intent creation, and dialog creation. This tool is integrated into all the messaging platforms the company supports.

Conversation Builder's skills agents lead to entirely new career paths, like Conversation Designer and Bot Manager. Such experience gives agents the ability to shape their careers and emerge as valuable contributors to the economy going forward.

A case in point, within five months of implementing LivePerson's Conversation Builder, HSBC created a fully functional and optimized bot with 15 intents, promoted the first-ever Bot Manager, saw messaging become the channel of choice for frontline employees, and achieved CSAT at more than 90 percent week on week. Looking ahead, HSBC plans to roll out Conversation Builder to other countries, increase bot containment, and teach bots to handle the fulfilment of questions. HSBC's team that completed the Conversation Builder training said: "Working to build chatbots has been an incredibly challenging, yet positive experience for us. As a team, we have used LivePerson's innovative and user-friendly platform to give our customer the best possible journey. The results have been great and it's been fantastic to see customers giving us such positive feedback to a feature that was completely new to them on our app."

Likewise, Virgin Atlantic has transformed from a largely synchronous contact center heavy in voice, traditional chat, and email to one focused on messaging and conversational AI—with SMS and WhatsApp outperforming all other CSAT channels. The airliner's invitation to its customers to use SMS messaging made a positive impact on convenience, experience, and CSAT. The company is now focused on improved bot strategy, new channels, and growing messaging volume.

The Breakout Platform in the Era of the Pandemic

While LivePerson has been a head-turner over the years due to its increasing value in building bridges with the customers, it was 2020 that brought the company to the epicenter of the contact center world. As consumers were left adrift by closed business locations and excessive phone hold times, they turned to messaging to engage with brands, LivePerson witnessed a massive increase in volume on its conversational platform compared to the pre-COVID times. "Once social distancing and lockdowns went into effect, we started seeing massive volume increases. But perhaps even more importantly, volume isn’t going back down. As we’ve known all along, consumers who experience the convenience and personalization of conversational commerce will start to demand it from all of their favorite brands," points out Robert. To that end, brands need to shift to adopt messaging and automation to handle the surge in volume and improve agent performance. Stepping up to the occasion, LivePerson allows brands to manage high volumes of incoming service requests by introducing automation and providing agents with a consolidated platform they can use to serve customers from the comfort of their own homes. Companies such as HSBC, GM Financial, David's Bridal, Zurich Switzerland, and more used LivePerson's AI platform to launch new messaging channels to accelerate remote working and better customer experiences amid social distancing regulations. As COVID-19 also brought the need for a new way of measuring conversational experiences, LivePerson's Performance Optimizer helped businesses accurately assess their customer service efficiency and make real-time changes to improve the effectiveness.

Spreading Compassion through AI Revolution

Team LivePerson has customer care at its heart and aims to spread compassion for one and all using artificial intelligence. The team has set out to realize a world where people genuinely care for each other and built BELLA, a mobile banking application. BELLA is a community where every participant in the community can use their funds to make someone else's day through random acts of generosity. Every participant will have a Karma account through which they can pay it forward to surprise and delight other BELLA users, plus receive surprises of their own, like someone covering their coffee bill as a treat. Through BELLA's unique model of compassion and care, LivePerson has taken c-commerce to an altruistic level, marking a new era in what AI can do to make everyday experiences feel more human.