SUCCESS STORY. Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC Providing Connection and Community for Loyal Fans

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1 SUCCESS STORY Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC Providing Connection and Community for Loyal Fans 2014

2 Organization Overview Founded in the early 1990s by the Traeger family, Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC markets outdoor cooking grills from its headquarters in Wilsonville, Oregon and an office in Springville, Utah. The company s products have been available across the country since Traeger Pellet Grills sought to grow e-commerce sales and make customer service more efficient and effective by launching a live chat channel. The company deployed a LivePerson solution three years ago, with Click to Chat and proactive chat invitations for both sales and customer service functions. Sales and customer service agents now field more than 2,400 live chat conversations monthly, and the channel has been an important factor in a 20 percent increase in average order values for the website. Since they were introduced in the early 1990s, Traeger Wood Pellet Grills have built an intensely loyal following. When our customers invite neighbors over for a barbeque, they inevitably say something like, This is the best chicken I ve ever had, says Ray Hansen, vice president of Online Marketing at Traeger. It instills a sense of pride in people for their Traeger grills, and it generates a lot of word of mouth referrals. The wood pellets provide unique flavor, and the grills have the flexibility to grill, bake, smoke, slow cook, braise, and barbecue. The Results Business Results 400+ live chat conversations per month 20% increase in overall AOV, partially due to live chat Customer Results 2,000+ live chat conversations per month Significant evidence of the popularity of the channel for solving problems For nearly 20 years, the Traeger family marketed the grills in limited quantities and only in the Pacific Northwest from their headquarters in Wilsonville, Oregon. But five years ago, the company s new owners began to take the products to the national market. Hansen was working for another company at the time, and Traeger recruited his manager to launch a sales division for the company. He brought me and a few other people over with him, Hansen recalls. We started out working from our homes to try to get all of our sales channels off the ground. Those channels include a much larger dealer network, branded retail stores in shopping malls across the country, direct selling through a road show program, and an e-commerce site managed by Hansen. When I first started, I was the online marketing department, Hansen remembers. I was Web development; I was graphic design; I was SEO; I was social media LivePerson, Inc. 2

3 The Challenges Provide an efficient and effective channel for customer service Increase e-commerce sales with a sales support channel Protect and support a brand that has intensely loyal followers The Solution Engagement Model Live chat for sales and customer service Key Capabilities LiveEngage platform with proactive chat and rulesbased targeting; future use of content targeting Customer Success Deployment assistance and ongoing advice and scorecards To grow our online presence, we needed more than just a phone number on our website. Ray Hansen, Vice President, Online Marketing, Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC A digital transformation At the time, the company s website was not doing much e-commerce. We sold a few items directly on the site, but most of the focus was on pointing people to our dealer network, Hansen explains. We love our dealers and still want to let people know where they can buy a grill in person, or get pellets and other supplies. But we also wanted to take a much more aggressive approach to direct selling. Hansen began a project to do exactly that, and it required much more than tinkering around the edges. We threw out the old site and started from scratch, he says. The new site was custom built, and the work was done 100 percent in house. It is much more user friendly, and after we launched it in 2011, we saw traffic increase rapidly. Once the new website was in place, Hansen and his team turned their attention to building other elements of customer experience. We added things like social media channels and recipe videos to engage with our unique customer base, he recalls. And we added staff: We now have a great art director, some production artists, a video guy, a social media manager, web developers, an manager, and a full-time chef who writes weekly recipes. Enthusiastic Traeger grill owners now communicate with the company and each other on a variety of channels. Adding digital engagement Traeger also decided to add a personal touch to the sales and customer service experience by launching a live chat engagement channel. To grow our online presence, we needed more than just a phone number on our website, Hansen explains. On the customer service side, we want to be there for our customers, whether they have questions about setting up a grill, getting a grill repaired, or even how to cook something. And for sales, we know that a live conversation at the right time will make a big difference in conversions. Hansen researched several live chat providers and settled on LivePerson because of its comprehensive view of digital engagement and leadership in the industry. LivePerson is one of the biggest players in that arena, Hansen says. Its solution was the most robust, and it offered all the features we needed LivePerson, Inc. 3

4 It is easier to join a conversation in progress, as I have the text of the prior conversation right on my screen. Andrew Koster, Customer Service Manager, Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC Rolling out a solution At the end of 2011, Traeger rolled out a deployment of LivePerson s LiveEngage platform for both sales and service. We started big, Hansen remembers. We hired 8 to 10 fully dedicated live chat agents and trained them to handle both sales and customer service inquiries, with four agents online at a time. But demand was very high, and we quickly realized that we had been a bit too ambitious. So we temporarily scaled back our live chat operations to handle customer service issues only. Plans were being made at the time to open a new sales call center and devote the existing contact center to customer service only. As a result, Traeger management decided that the best strategy for restoring live chat for sales was to build it into the charter of the team that would staff the new location. The LiveEngage platform went live with the opening of the center in November Now that two different teams are chatting, we use the LiveEngage platform to intelligently segment the traffic and route it to the correct agent team sales or customer service, Hansen explains. We re still in the process of turning everything that is sales-related over to them, but they re already seeing great results. Around four fully dedicated live chat agents are on duty for sales support during peak times. The LivePerson Customer Success manager assigned to the Traeger account provided advice and assistance for both deployments, and maintains a cadence of regular touch points with Hansen and his team. Our Customer Success manager came out and spent two days with the sales team when that contact center opened, Hansen relates. He gave them a tour of the platform, helped them set targeting rules, created avatars for the agents, and got everything configured for the launch. Since then, he has contacted us regularly, providing regular scorecards and advice on how to optimize the deployment. Engaging through proactive chat Proactive chat invitations are used with both the sales and service deployments. From a service perspective, we have a couple of simple rules, explains Andrew Koster, Traeger s customer service manager. For example, visitors who spend a certain amount of time on the Frequently Asked Questions page get an invitation, but only if an agent is available. The LiveEngage platform provides us with the flexibility to fine tune who sees an invitation and when. For sales, several rules target people who are in danger of dropping out of the buying process. The biggest one we have identified is when visitors add items to a cart, begin the checkout procedure, then break out to go look at something else, Hansen explains. Obviously they ve got a question about something, so we want to jump in and help them out. And when people spend a longer-than-average amount of time on certain pages, we ll prompt them in that case as well LivePerson, Inc. 4

5 Our Customer Success manager spent two days with the sales team when that contact center opened. Ray Hansen, Vice President, Online Marketing, Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC Maintaining a superior customer experience Agent training is critical for both the sales and customer service deployments. Our agents go through a two-week training period that covers both phone and live chat, as our agents provide both services, Koster relates. After the training, agents go live on the phone lines first. Once our department supervisors are confident in their product knowledge and communication skills with customers, we allow them to begin using the LiveEngage platform. Most agents start chatting a month or so after completing the training. To ensure quality interactions and provide growth opportunities for agents, Koster and the manager of the sales contact center make use of the LiveEngage platform to monitor live conversations and review transcripts of past conversations. It is a great coaching tool, Koster asserts. Our agents are very good, but sometimes a seemingly insignificant change in an agent s behavior can really improve the quality of the interaction. Another advantage of managers being logged into the system is that they can take over conversations when a customer has a problem that is not easily solved. It is much easier to join a conversation in progress with live chat than over the phone, as I have the text of the prior conversation right on my screen, Koster says. And when customers have issues that need to be escalated, they are usually not in the mood to tell their whole story again. It saves time for the customer and for us. Impressive results After almost three years of with the LiveEngage platform, Traeger s Customer Service team now conducts an average of just over 2,000 live chat conversations per month. While the company does not collect customer satisfaction data for the channel, Koster believes that live chat brings the highest level of approval. People love the ability to send a quick message via live chat, rather than dialing into a phone queue, Koster notes. On the sales side, live chat volume stands at around 400 conversations per month, and the channel has contributed to an overall 20 percent increase in average order value (AOV) for the company. Once customers purchase grills with the assistance of live chat, they tend to come back to the channel. The more customers we engage with through live chat, the more that come back to us just to get recipes or further information, Hansen explains. They should go to the customer service department, but our link is the one they know. It is an illustration of how important live chat is to increasing digital adoption. Exciting future plans The sales team is making plans to begin using the content targeting features of the LiveEngage platform to extend special offers and other marketing content to visitors based on their behavior. We re in the process of writing the targeting rules now and thinking about what campaigns we might run, Hansen reports. It will be interesting to see whether a special offer that is good for a limited time might help people make the final decision to buy. Another potential enhancement on the horizon is a mobile Click-to-Chat experience through the LiveEngage platform. Our mobile traffic has skyrocketed over the past year, so we are developing a more responsive design for our website, Hansen explains. And I m in the process of researching the best configuration for optimizing the LivePerson live chat to the mobile experience LivePerson, Inc. 5

6 Words of advice When asked what guidance he would give to his peers who are looking at deploying a digital engagement solution, Hansen does not hesitate. My biggest word of advice is to avoid biting off more than you can chew, he relates. We had so many things that we wanted to accomplish and still do but we have learned to take one step at a time. A smaller team cannot do everything at once, so identify what is most important and build from there. But for the loyal fans of Traeger Wood Pellet Grills, recent improvements in the customer experience are a welcome addition to the remarkable product experience they have had all along. The social media channels are great for connecting with customers, but I am convinced that they would be incomplete without a real-time engagement channel like live chat from LivePerson, Hansen concludes. It is a critical part of how we connect with customers. And with sales continuing to grow, you can be sure that Traeger customers will be swapping recipes for years to come. About LivePerson LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) offers a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to proactively connect in real-time with their customers via chat, voice, and content delivery at the right time, through the right channel, including websites, social media, and mobile devices. This intelligent engagement is driven by real-time behavioral analytics, producing connections based on a true understanding of business objectives and customer needs. LivePerson is headquartered in New York City with offices in San Francisco, Atlanta, Tel Aviv, London, Amsterdam, and Melbourne. Contact LivePerson, Inc. T: Tenth Ave F: th Floor info@liveperson.com New York, NY Follow the conversation on Twitter: #LiveEngage 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 6