LivePerson

HSBC, one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations, was facing a challenge with its customer service operations. With over 19,000 customer service agents, the bank was dealing with a high volume of repetitive tasks that put pressure on its agents. The traditional career path in the contact center world was also leading to inevitable attrition, as it was defined as agent → team manager → department manager → operations manager → head of contact centre. This lack of opportunity as the field narrows held back the chance of reaching the highest possible customer satisfaction with every interaction. Furthermore, HSBC was planning to shift towards Conversational Banking, which was expected to grow interactions considerably and require conversational experts to manage the chatbots.

In 2019, Open Universities Australia (OUA) decided to transition from live chat to conversational messaging, coinciding with the rebuilding of its digital platform. The goal was to enhance service for the 25,000 students they were catering to at the time. However, the contact centre required all students to create a new password, a task that posed significant challenges in a non-automated world. Additionally, OUA was using Facebook ads that linked to a form, which then funneled details to an outbound team for follow-up. This method was not particularly effective in terms of sales or user experience.

Omni Hotels & Resorts, a luxury brand in a highly competitive market, recognized the importance of every site visitor as a cost-effective means for customer acquisition and revenue generation. They identified the leisure and business travel content of their websites as opportunities for new customer acquisition. Many vacation and retreat packages required human-assistance during the booking and checkout process. The company had been relying primarily on telephone, and some email, as the communication vehicles for customer service. Due to the high volume of inquiries, customers would sometimes wait to obtain the assistance required to book their vacation. Omni wanted to provide an alternative means of engaging with customers and prospects in order to improve customer service and conversion rates, while maximizing the opportunities each site visitor represents for the brand.

StraighterLine, a provider of self-paced college courses, was looking for a way to engage with students and prospective students in a familiar channel. They wanted to provide engagement options for mobile users and improve conversion and customer satisfaction rates. The company had a live chat solution from LivePerson, but it was not being used to its full potential. They were completing around 100 chat conversations per month, with inquiries fielded on an ad-hoc basis by members of the telephone call center team. They realized they were missing substantial opportunities and needed to optimize their live chat.

Discount Tire Direct, a subsidiary of Discount Tire Company, was facing challenges in delivering an outstanding digital customer experience and increasing e-commerce conversion rates. The company wanted to maintain high in-store customer satisfaction rates via digital channels. They had experimented with an on-premise live chat solution when they initially added e-commerce to their website in 2003, but it was simply a passive button called Click to Talk and was soon removed. In late 2011, they decided to revisit the use of live chat deployment on their website to rethink how they engaged customers on their website, seeking to make it the best buying experience possible for their customers.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) was seeking a clearer channel for communication with its international members. The organization was facing challenges in facilitating communications with international members through a written, real-time channel. They also needed to provide service for members and prospective members who might not call in. The ACFE was looking for a solution that could improve communication in situations where language barriers and poor connection quality were hindering effective customer service. They also recognized that members in North America would benefit from a digital engagement channel, as it would save time and provide a convenient alternative to phone calls.

Moosejaw, an outdoor retailer, faced several challenges. They wanted to humanize the digital experience, deliver real-time online customer engagement, drive digital conversion rates, and engage customers at high-impact moments. As an early adopter of the Internet, Moosejaw understood the importance of digital engagement and implemented a live chat solution powered by LivePerson. However, they wanted to evolve beyond chat to digital engagement and become more strategic in how they used the LiveEngage platform. They also wanted to replicate the in-store experience onto the website and find ways to engage with customers through additional channels.

Home Properties Inc., a real estate company with over 40,000 housing units in nearly 120 apartment communities across the Eastern United States, was looking to provide an additional engagement channel for sales and service. They wanted to make it as easy as possible for anyone looking to contact them either because they’re already a customer, or because they want to be a customer. The company had previously deployed a live chat solution in 2006, but the system was often down and the supplier's team was not very professional. This led to the need for a reliable live chat solution with professional support.

Parcel2Go, the largest online package delivery service in the UK, was struggling to provide support to customers on nearly 2,000 parcels delivered each month. With 10 agents, customers would often have to wait in lengthy phone queues before their question could be answered or their issue addressed. The volume of inquiries they were receiving via the telephone were extremely costly, at £4 per call. The company’s customer service channel costs were higher than desired. Parcel2Go sought a cost-effective, online customer service channel to efficiently absorb the high volume of customer queries and provide an improved level of service and support.

The consortium of libraries in Ontario was looking for ways to keep libraries relevant as pillars in their communities, and inevitably that means connecting online. They wanted to reach library patrons where they are with research help and other information and boost the number of patrons served per staff. The traditional method of accessing library services required walking into a physical library, which was not convenient for all patrons. The consortium sought to expand access to library research services.

ICON Health & Fitness, a leading name in the fitness industry, was facing a challenge with high abandonment rates across its web properties. Despite attracting millions of visitors to its brand websites each month, the company's online retail performance indicated surprisingly high abandonment rates. The team had difficulty pinpointing the exact reasons for the low conversion rates. They realized that in order to grow ICON’s direct-to-consumer retail business and drive revenue via online channels, ICON needed to implement a real-time engagement strategy that would identify the visitors most likely to benefit from help during their buying process, reducing overall site abandonment and successfully convert prospects into satisfied, long-term customers.

Warehouse Skateboards, a premier online retailer of skateboards, skateboard accessories and skate clothing, was facing a challenge with the costs of engaging their customers via an 800 number. The phone bills were eating up all of their profits and they needed to find a way to move those conversations away from the phone. The company was also facing issues with their website's user interface and content, which were not reflecting how their customers shopped and thought. They needed a solution that would not only reduce their customer service costs but also improve their website's user experience and conversion rates.

Frank Myers Auto Maxx, a car dealership in North Carolina, operates by appointment only. While their website provides a wealth of information about the dealership and its offerings, customers looking to schedule an appointment for the next day would be out of luck if it was after the business's closing time of 7:00 p.m. As a small business, Frank Myers Auto did not have the resources to stay open late and take customer calls throughout the night. The dealership realized it was missing valuable opportunities to interact with potential prospects and customers after hours.

Bankwest, a subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is a bank established in 1895. It is leading the way in digitally transforming their customer experience and their contact centre. They have been a client of LivePerson for over 6 years and are constantly adapting and driving adoption through web chat, mobile chat, and now In-app and Web Messaging. With a clear digitally focused strategy, having Messaging and Conversational design both playing important roles within that space, Bankwest puts the customer first and strives to offer a world-class experience. They saw the market evolving, their customer’s preferences changing, and strived to lead in the contact centre space. They rolled out In-app Messaging across iOS and Android, then replaced their web chat offering with authenticated asynchronous Web Messaging.

Open Universities Australia (OUA) was facing challenges in providing around-the-clock coverage to its international audience to increase revenue. They wanted to increase entry points and channels for prospective students to more easily engage with the education aggregator. Their long-term goal was to enhance automation to match the value of human agents. To solve these challenges, OUA created a roadmap of automation use cases over the past two years.

David’s Bridal, an international wedding dress destination, was facing a unique challenge. When shopping for wedding dresses, 50% of brides were calling stores to book appointments. If the stores were closed or sales agents couldn’t get to the phone in time, they were losing business. Agents sometimes had to step away from the brides they were helping to answer the phone, creating a poor experience for in-store customers. The company wanted to be available for customers 24/7 without having to add additional staff. They believed AI and automation could help and began looking at different chatbot providers.

Commonwealth Bank, a leading provider of integrated financial services in Australia, was looking to improve customer experience and support, increase conversion rates, and improve operational efficiency. The bank had initiated a live chat pilot in 2009 to differentiate its brand and make it easier for customers to complete mortgage and other banking applications online. However, the bank had reached a point of diminishing returns with its existing rules for customer engagement and needed to rethink its approach to targeting customers.

Plusnet, a Sheffield-based broadband and phone provider, experienced substantial growth over a short period of time to the extent that the business was struggling to cope with the volume of sales. The lengthy registration process (14-16 pages before the site re-launch) was slowing down conversion rates. Customers were experiencing a frustrating sign-up process and taking an average of twenty five minutes to convert. The business identified an opportunity to engage with customers before they felt the need to call the contact centre, thereby deflecting the influx of calls and assisting speedier conversions.

Conduent, a company that delivers mission-critical services and solutions on behalf of businesses and governments, was looking to improve its customer service experience. The company's Human Resources and Learning Solutions division serves one-third of Fortune 100 companies across 80 countries, and it was seeking to improve both the workforce experience and operational efficiencies. Conduent wanted to provide an easy-to-use, engaging experience for its customers, and it needed a solution that could handle a high volume of interactions efficiently. The company also wanted to extend its service hours to accommodate customers who review their personal benefit information during non-work hours.

Virgin Media UK aimed to optimize digital sales assisted conversions for the business. The initial setup involved launching web-chat to support its digital operations, with 100% of journeys being human agent driven. The first bot went live on Black Friday 2018, marking a milestone for the team and the start of an accelerated innovation path. The pivot to web-messaging came in spring 2019, which led to the scaling of automation, delivering 1 in 5 sales made online. The challenge was to find the right balance between the agent’s ability to close and convert sales, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and automation.

Virgin Atlantic, the UK's second largest long-haul airline, prides itself on offering a high level of customer service, starting from the point of booking via their website. However, managing fluctuating levels of customer enquiries, particularly via email, was proving to be a significant challenge. The average query took at least three emails and 48 hours to resolve. The airline needed to find a way to improve this response time without increasing costs. Additionally, Virgin Atlantic wanted to improve ticket sales conversion rates and catch website visitors who were dropping off before completing the booking process.

Extra Space Storage wanted to deploy live chat for sales in a deliberate way, using extensive post-deployment testing to refine the program for maximum effectiveness and optimal customer experience. They were concerned that live chat might just cannibalize business from their other channels, which could negatively affect commissioned salespeople without improving the bottom line. They wanted to find out whether they could actually get incremental conversions from live chat. The team started by placing a nonintrusive Click-to-Chat button for potential customers who had spent 60 seconds on the site’s facility, search, or reserve and hold pages.

Community College of Denver (CCD) faced a significant increase in enrollment, which put a strain on their existing systems and programs. The administrative functions, particularly the Call Center, faced unprecedented pressure. The college needed a technology solution that would enable the Call Center to handle a higher volume of support calls without increasing resources. They realized that live chat could bring the economies of scale they were looking for. They also needed to improve their website architecture to improve students’ ability to self-serve.

Beau-coup, a leader in the online favors and gifts industry, was facing challenges with its customer service. The company prides itself on offering exceptional customer service, but technical issues with their previous chat provider were causing interruptions and a frustrating experience for both customers and service reps. The company was dropping a lot of chats due to connection issues, and they were missing 20 to 30 chats a day. They also lacked information about how their customers came to their site, what search terms they used, and if the resulting chat was proactive or reactive. There was no method to the madness in how their chat invitations were fired, and they experienced very poor acceptance rates as a result.

Poder Comercial, a mobile phone distributor that markets Telcel services to corporate accounts and consumer distributors throughout Mexico, wanted to build on its reputation for personalized service by adding a live chat channel for sales and customer service. The company was looking for a solution that would provide an intimate, real-time engagement channel to support its corporate reputation for personalized service, increase sales in corporate and distributor accounts, and bring more efficiency and effectiveness to customer service operations. The company had been considering live chat as a sales and customer service channel for several years, but wanted to ensure they got it right the first time. They conducted a market survey of digital engagement solutions, looking for a solution that went beyond rudimentary live chat to an intelligent and proactive engagement solution, and a demonstrably secure platform in a cloud-based environment.

PAC Web Hosting Ltd. was facing a challenge with its rudimentary live chat solution which was causing website slowdowns. The company wanted to engage with customers in a personal way to increase sales. They were looking to move from a live chat channel to a comprehensive digital engagement strategy. The company needed to replace its live chat solution due to technical problems it was causing on the company’s website.

Landings Credit Union, formerly known as Tempe Schools Credit Union, underwent a name change in 2013 to reflect a broader membership base. However, the organization faced challenges in promoting its new identity due to a limited advertising budget. The credit union wanted to maintain its reputation for personalized customer service while expanding its membership base. It sought to provide a personalized, digital customer service channel to support its corporate initiative to build new membership. The organization's president and CEO, Margaret Hunnicutt, learned about LivePerson at a conference for credit union executives and saw potential in the solution.

GenoLogics, a Canadian laboratory information management systems vendor, wanted to provide a channel where prospects could quickly get answers to questions about the company’s highly technical product offerings. The company had previously conducted a brief trial of a rudimentary live chat solution, but found it wanting. Despite this setback, GenoLogics CEO Michael Ball believed that live chat could still bring value to the company. The challenge was to find a better live chat solution that could engage website visitors and answer their questions, thereby keeping them on the website longer.

Lifeline Australia, a crisis counseling and referral service, wanted to add a live chat channel to its phone counseling services to reach a younger demographic that is less comfortable with calling in by phone. The organization initially tried a rudimentary live chat solution and an internally-developed application, but found these solutions lacking in several ways. The offshore service had slow connectivity and full-time support was difficult to obtain. The in-house system was not built with the right technology skills and had mistakes in the underlying architecture of the platform.

SAHAR, a nonprofit organization based in Israel, was facing the challenge of enabling real-time digital engagement with distressed individuals. They needed to offer mobile chat and leverage data insights to improve chat and information effectiveness. The organization was seeking to connect its network of approximately 100 volunteers with those seeking assistance, and they were conducting approximately 1,000 live chat sessions each month. They needed to add mobile live chat, which was becoming increasingly important for their Arabic-speaking audience who primarily used mobile devices.

Extraco Banks was faced with the challenge of mirroring the customer experience in bank lobbies online. They wanted to ensure ease of implementation and ongoing management of their digital engagement platform. Protecting customer interactions and data was a top priority. The bank also wanted to integrate their digital engagement platform with their existing Jack Henry Banking Online and Mobile solutions platform. The bank's unique SWARM Banking® methodology, which involves employees 'swarming' to where the traffic is and taking each customer through the entire banking experience without handing them off to a colleague, presented additional challenges for digital implementation.

Cvent, a leading cloud-based enterprise event management platform, was facing a high bounce rate on its website. The company wanted to provide a compelling customer experience for its diverse website visitors. The complexity of event planning and the inability to provide pricing on the website made it difficult for visitors to find the information they needed. The company had tried another live chat product but found it lacking in several areas. The company needed a solution that was cloud-based, scalable, with robust reporting capabilities and the ability to integrate with its existing and planned digital marketing infrastructure.

United Way of Greater Atlanta, one of the largest United Way agencies in the United States, wanted to expand on the tremendous success of its 211 telephone referral program, which connects community members with a wide variety of social services. The agency realized that it could build on the success of the 211 program and extend its benefits to a larger population by revamping its website and adding online engagement options. The agency underwent 18 months of strategic planning, fundraising, and development work before launching its new online portal in April 2011. The agency added access to services by email, text message, and live chat.

Nine West Group, a division of Nine West Holdings, Inc., aimed to increase e-commerce sales for its Ninewest.com website while building brand value in support of more sales at partner retailers. The company wanted to provide an optimal e-commerce experience to drive incremental revenue, build brand satisfaction for future in-store purchases, and reduce support costs while improving customer service. The challenge was to stay competitive in e-commerce, which has become more complex over the years. The company needed to consider what their site looks like on a variety of screens—desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone—as well as a variety of operating systems. Today’s customers expect to be able to access real-time help at the touch of a button.

Traeger Pellet Grills, a company that markets outdoor cooking grills, was looking to grow its e-commerce sales and make customer service more efficient and effective. They wanted to launch a live chat channel to provide an efficient and effective channel for customer service, increase e-commerce sales with a sales support channel, and protect and support a brand that has intensely loyal followers. The company had a website but it was not doing much e-commerce. The focus was on pointing people to their dealer network. However, they wanted to take a much more aggressive approach to direct selling.

The Michigan Legal Help Program was established to provide legal information for citizens who find themselves in the civil court system without a lawyer. The program offers a variety of resources, including informational content, referrals to legal services organizations, and automated online legal forms and documents. However, the complexity of these resources and the variables in people’s situations often led to questions and difficulties in navigation. The five-person staff of the Michigan Legal Help Program did not have the capacity to field inquiries from the public. The organization needed a cost-effective channel to answer legal information questions, help visitors navigate the tools available, and ensure that volunteer agents could log into the platform from anywhere.

Lancôme, a globally recognized brand for its upscale line of cosmetics and fragrances, wanted to extend its well-known personalized customer experience to its online shoppers. The company aimed to build in-store and e-commerce sales through digital engagement and support the “inner nature” of the Lancôme brand, individualized service, for online customers. They wanted to provide an intimate channel to help customers open up. The team knew that live chat would be one way to accomplish this. They felt that women might open up more fully with live chat, and explore what they really want. The team began a formal evaluation of live chat solutions in early 2012, and they had some detailed requirements. They wanted to have proactive chat with robust targeting, a customized live chat experience for mobile devices, the ability to push marketing content to selected visitors, and extensive reporting and data analysis capabilities.

eUKhost, a leading web hosting solutions provider, was facing a challenge of managing a large and continually growing client base. The volume of incoming calls and emails was increasing steadily, with the website averaging over 85,000 unique visitors each month. This led to a need for improving customer satisfaction by speeding up response times. Additionally, there was an opportunity to improve conversion rates by guiding visitors along the ordering process.

IPSL, one of the UK’s largest suppliers of PVC wall and ceiling cladding panels, relies on internet sales for 75% of their revenue and as the primary source of first-time clients. The company makes a significant investment in Google AdWords campaigns, running approximately ten to twelve campaigns, covering over 16,000 keywords in total. However, they experienced a leveling-off of their results—additional budget commitment was not yielding a proportionate increase in conversions. This served to sharpen their focus on how they could increase the ROI of their already-substantial investment in pay-per-click campaigns.

Mantra Group, a leading accommodation provider in Australia and New Zealand, was facing a significant challenge in managing high volumes of incoming traffic to its website. With the majority of hotel reservations and bookings now occurring online in Australia, Mantra had devoted a significant proportion of marketing spend to driving traffic to its site, including regular email activity to a database of over one million subscribers. However, supporting such a vast quantity of people was proving a significant challenge and conversion rates were low. Mantra Group recognised a major opportunity to improve the way it engaged with website visitors in order to provide a more optimal online experience and encourage them to convert.

EE, a UK-based digital communications company, was looking to establish its brand and enhance its customer service across all channels. The company registers around 86 million customer conversations via online and offline channels annually. EE saw Live Chat as an important new way to establish high levels of customer satisfaction in relation to transactional queries and general enquiries on the site. The challenge was to fully establish the brand in the minds of consumers, which only arrived on the scene in October 2012 with the launch of 4G. In addition to branding, EE wanted to be considered best in service across all channels.

Sun Life Direct, a well-known brand in the UK life assurance sector, was facing a challenge with its digital marketing strategy. The company's customers traditionally applied via telephone or paper from traditional direct marketing advertising. However, with the increasing amount of time consumers now spend online, particularly when it comes to researching and purchasing products, Sun Life Direct realized that it needed to offer an online service to its customers, comparable to its offline one, and maintaining high customer service standards was key to this. The company also wanted to set up a digital platform that would facilitate the marketing of new products to customers with a different demographic profile. Its existing target customers are typically late-adopters of digital technology and sometimes need help in making the switch to online applications. For reasons of cost, expertise and efficiency, online customer service would need to be handled by Sun Life Direct’s existing customer telephone enquiry service, operated by 2Touch, based in Sunderland.

Sunweb Holidays, a popular travel holiday company, was facing challenges in the increasingly competitive online travel industry. The cost of targeting customers had risen significantly, with 50% of the company's marketing budget being spent on Google Ad Words alone, which was not driving the required return on investment. The company also suffered from limited IT agility, with a small local team only able to control the site content via a Content Management System that offered limited personalisation and reporting capabilities. Sunweb Holidays wanted to capitalise on the growing number of visitors to its website and convert them into sales, rather than just focusing on driving traffic to the website.

Intuit, Inc. sought to delight its customers by building digital engagement into a larger strategy to improve the customer experience. Later, the company consolidated live chat operations and began using transcription and text analytics to optimize the customer experience. As a result, Intuit has achieved a 20 percent improvement in customer satisfaction scores for certain product lines and as much as a 25 percent improvement in conversion rates. The company projects significant additional benefits with the recent deployment of predictive targeting for high-value customers.

Harvard Business Services, a leading provider of business formation services for Delaware corporations and LLCs, faced several challenges. The company wanted to extend its culture of personalized service to an online channel, increase sales by engaging with customers at moments of confusion, and provide a comfortable channel to assist international customers for whom English is a second language. The company had previously used AOL Instant Messaging as a channel for quick answers to questions that came up during the signup process, but found it was not convenient for clients to connect with them, and the interface wasn’t always user friendly.

Shortcuts, a software provider for the hair, beauty, and spa industries, wanted to increase sales and provide a non-intrusive way for potential customers to have their questions answered. The company decided to deploy a live chat engagement channel to provide 24-hour sales support from three locations worldwide. The goal was to field an average of 15 to 20 live chat conversations daily, with the hope of generating qualified leads and sales. The challenge was to find a suitable live chat solution and integrate it into their existing system.

Exodus, a tour operator that offers small group expeditions led by expert local guides, was facing a challenge with its online customer engagement. The company sells high-end adventure holidays that require a high level of commitment from customers, resulting in low conversion rates on its website. Exodus needed a solution to support and engage with online customers who required extra guidance when booking their adventure holidays. The company was looking for a way to drive sales, improve customer service, and collect valuable data for future promotional activity.

TOOLSTOP, a UK-based online retailer of professional hand and power tools, was looking to enhance its customers' online shopping experiences. While the company had various channels for customer engagement, including email, Facebook, and a blog, it recognized the potential of real-time interaction with product experts to address customer queries about pricing, shipping, and technical details. TOOLSTOP had already implemented LivePerson’s LP Chat for Small Business solution on its website, which significantly increased sales conversions. However, the company wanted to further optimize their chat initiative without a significant investment in time and resources.