LivePerson Benchmarking Study Sales Edition

Transcription

1 LivePerson Benchmarking Study Sales Edition

2 2 Executive Summary The following document summarizes the results of an in-depth study of the online performance of several current LivePerson Sales Edition clients for a two-week period of time. The purpose of the study was to determine performance benchmarks for chat as a channel for online sales. Clients using Sales Edition represent three industry verticals: telecommunications, high tech and financial services. Each of these clients has trained sales agents available to address customer questions and help customers buy from their site. In addition to performance benchmarks, LivePerson conducted a control group experiment to measure the net increase in sales as a result of chat. The results of this experiment are included is this paper. Key Findings for Sales The average hot lead ratio (percentage of visitors with a high potential to buy) across all clients was 24%, the average invitation rate (percentage of hot leads invited to chat) was 51% and the average acceptance rate (those accepting the chat invitation) was 8%. The key driver behind the 51% invitation rate is staffing. Fully staffed sales centers have invitation rates of 80%. 57% of the total chats were qualified chats and the sales or leads/qualified chat ratio across all clients was 34%. Qualified chats do not include abandoned chats prior to the start of an interaction and service chats. Sales ratios increase to approximately 50% if a 7-day window is considered. Chat resulted in a 50% increase in sales measured relative to a control group of hot leads not invited to chat. 86% of the visitors chatting rated the experience as good or excellent. 23% of the visitors chatting added their address to an opt-in list. The average chat was 11 minutes long and agents were handling 1.6 chats concurrently.

3 3 Sales Edition Performance Benchmarks Sales Edition clients use LivePerson s business intelligence engine to identify high-potential prospects ( hot leads ) based on their website activity and invite these hot leads to chat with an online sales agent. Targeted invitations that offer live sales assistance to customers significantly increase sales and lead conversion rates when they are offered during the pain points of the buying process. The Sales Edition Benchmarks are summarized in two categories: Performance Metrics and Sales Conversion Metrics. The Performance Metrics represent typical call center metrics and center around chat time, wait time and agent utilization. The Sales Conversion Metrics, include only proactive invites to chat, summarize the online sales process including hot lead ratios, acceptance ratios, chat ratios and sales ratios. Performance Metrics Metric Average Range Chats/week Chat Rate 89% 70%-98% Abandon Rate 11% 2%-30% Average Wait Time 0:33 0:06-1:35 Average Wait Time Abandon 1:17 0:23-3:13 Chat Length 11:22 8:00 17:34 Contact Time 13:19 9:33-17:40 Definitions: Chat Rate: Chats/Chat Requests Abandon Rate: Abandons/Chat Requests Contact Time: Measured from when the visitor clicks to chat to when they end the chat and complete the exit survey Agent Utilization: Engaged Time/Login Time. Measures the total time than agent is engaged in a chat while logged into the system Concurrent Chats: Average number of concurrent chats agent is involved in while chatting Online time/login time: measures the percentage of time an agent is online when logged in Agent Utilization 38% 9%-63% Concurrent Chats Online Time/ Login Time 47% 8%-76% Chats per Week The number of chats that a company receives is a function of total website traffic, the complexity of the products or services offered online, the placement of the click-to-chat button on the website (if offered), and the rules the company put in place to generate proactive invitations to chat. Clients can increase or decrease the overall number of chat requests or the number of inquires they receive by adding or eliminating the chat button from certain webpages or changing the rules that generate the chat invitations. Some examples of how companies improve the number of leads: 1. Add chat buttons to only specific pages along the buying process 2. Do not place the chat button on your website. Instead, allow the chat button to appear or have an invitation to chat pop-up when visitors meet a rule that qualifies them as a hot lead. Chat Rate and Abandon Rate The chat rate measures the rate at which customers requesting to chat with an agent actually get into a chat. The abandon rate measures the rate at which customers abandon their request before they connect with an agent. There are numerous reasons why these numbers fluctuate. For example: 1. The pre-chat survey may be too long or ask for information that a customer is unwilling to provide. 2. The wait time may exceed the time a customer is willing to spend to speak with a representative. 3. A curious customer may click on the click-to-chat button or the proactive invitation to chat to see where it takes them, but decide not to chat with a live representative.

4 4 Some of our clients have taken simple steps to help decrease their abandonment rates: 1. A client that experienced an abandonment rate of 42% added additional operators at high-traffic times in order to cut their wait time by 30 seconds. Their abandonment rate decreased significantly to 3% once they increased their capacity. 2. One client lowered their abandonment rate by 10 percentage points by changing their pre-chat survey from five questions to two: name and inquiry type. This customer does not lose a significant amount of data because they track their customer s contact history through cookies and added questions to their exit survey, including an opt-in field. This has also decreased the amount of false information they receive. 3. Several clients offer a warm up message to visitors that let them know that an invitation to chat may happen during their visit to the website. This typically reduces abandonment rates by 10-15%. Chat Length Similarly to a phone call, chat length is based on several factors including the complexity of the inquiry or products or services offered. If a company uses live chat for sales, their chat time can exceed the average chat length of 11:22. This number may point to long agent or customer response times or insufficient canned answers. Contact Time The contact time reflects the total time that your customers spend to resolve their inquiry. Compare the Contact Time to the Chat Length to view the total time customers spend outside the actual chat with an agent. This number may point to long wait times or complex or lengthy pre-chat or exit surveys. Agent Productivity The following three metrics are designed to help measure agent productivity. Concurrent Chat Rate This rate identifies the number of chats that reps hold at one time. The average for our surveyed clients is chats. Additional research shows that operators are capable of handling 2-3 concurrent chats, helping to reduce overall contact center costs. Although some chats may require a dedicated representative, there are several actions that a company can take to improve this rate: 1. Train operators to improve their typing skills and help them understand the differences between chatting online and speaking with a customer over the telephone. 2. To assist in the sales process, sales qualification questions can be scripted and populated into the interactive technology to ensure consistency in the process. 3. Revise staffing to ensure that all operators are busy while they are online. 4. Force operators to take more than one chat while they are in the Online state. Agent Utilization This number measures the effectiveness of your operators by looking at their Engaged Time to Login Time. Here are some things to consider when looking at this number: 1. Operators that fill out a long operator survey to help qualify their chats have less time to chat with customers. 2. An operator that forgets to logout of their account after hours will increase their Login Time and decrease their utilization. 3. Companies that overstaff may see decreases in agent utilization, as there are not enough chats coming in to fill an agent s queue. Online Time/Login Time This number measures an operator s effectiveness by looking at their Online Time to Login Time, which details how much of an agent s day is spent in the Online state versus the Away or Back in Five Minutes states. Here are some things to consider when looking at this number:

5 5 1. Do operators place themselves in the Away mode to complete the operator survey or to answer telephone calls or s? 2. Do operators forget to logout when they finish their shift? This may cause the LivePerson system to default them into an Away state as a result of inactivity. Sales Conversion Metrics The metrics below are related to proactive automatic chat invitation based on the rules engine. Metric Average Range Weekly Visitors 236,000 15,000-1,000,000 Hot Leads/Visitors 24% 3%-45% Invite Rate 51% 23%-79% Acceptance Rate 8% 3%-16% Connection Rate 76% 44%-93% Qualified Chat Rate 57% 18%-91% Sales/Qualified Chat 23% 10%-40% Lead/Qualified Chat 26% 8%-70% Sales or Lead/ Qualified Chat 34% 12%-96% Metric Definitions Weekly Visitors: Average number of visitors to the pages with LivePerson tags Hot Leads: Visitors representing a high potential to buy based on behavior patterns Invite Rate: Percentage of Hot Leads sent an invitation to chat Acceptance Rate: Percentage of the Hot Leads invited that accept the invitation to chat Sales and Leads: Defined by the operator surveys and filled out by each agent after a chat Qualified Chats: Total number of chats (terminated chats + Service chats) A hot lead is defined as a visitor to the website that exhibits the online behavior of a potential buyer. This is based on their web page activity. The visitor behavior triggers the LivePerson engine to proactively invite them into a real-time sales consultation with a representative. Some behaviors that may trigger a rule include; pagevisit pattern, time spent on a page, products viewed, a repeat visitor or buyer, or a customer that has backed out of the shopping cart. Invitation & Acceptance Rate The average invitation rate on hot leads is 51%. This number is determined by the staffing ability of each client. Clients determine how many invitations they invite with the availability of their reps. The invitation has an opt-out or decline option so the visitors can choose to accept help or decline and continue surfing the pages on their own. 8% of the hot leads that receive an invitation accept the live chat. The range of acceptance is 3%-16% which is largely related to the rules behind the proactive automatic invitation and the creative of the invitation. Our best-in-class deployments exhibit an acceptance rate of 14-16%. Connection Rate 44%-93% of the invitations that are accepted are connected to the chat with the average being 76%. Low connection rates are often a result of would-be chatters abandoning their request before completing the prechat survey. The pre-chat survey asks the visitors for information for routing the chat. Clients that do not have pre-chat surveys have up to 30% higher connection rate. Sales & Leads On average, our clients convert 23% of their qualified leads (chats minus terminated chats or service chats) into a sale and 26% into a qualified lead. Overall, clients convert 34% of their qualified chats into a sales opportunity. Training is critical to increasing this number. Selling through chat is very different than the phone and trainers should emphasize methods for transferring phone skills to the web. To assist in the sales process, script sales qualification questions and add them into a canned answer database to ensure consistency in the process. Also adjust compensation systems to incent the agents. The most successful clients set up separate compensation plans for the agents that reflect the technology and the new skills required to sell effectively.

6 6 Satisfaction Metrics Metric Average Range Exit Survey Completion Rate 26% 17%-35% Service Rating 86% 69%-94% Opt in rate 23% 13%-40% Satisfaction Metrics Definitions Exit Survey Completion Rate: Percentage of chatters completing the exit survey Service Rating: Percentage of chatters rating the experience a 4 or 5 on a 5 point scale with 5 being excellent and 4 being good The exit survey allows visitors to rate their experience in real time. 26% of all visitors complete the exit survey. Clients can increase their response rate by keeping the exit survey clear and concise. Over 85% of people who chatted were very satisfied with the chat interaction and would very likely use the chat channel again as their primary interaction with the company. This was consistently measured across all of the clients we studied. In addition, 23% of people who chatted agreed to be contacted again. This number increased to 40% when customers were asked if the company could contact them in the future regarding new product and services. This is a very impressive opt-in rate. Control Group Study LivePerson conducted a structured control group test to measure the incremental increase in sales as a result of chat. A two week test was conducted for a client selling software online. 33% of the visitors that were labeled as hot leads were not subjected to the chat invitation and the remaining 67% of the hot lead visitors were. Visitor traffic through the online buying process of each of the groups was measured. The LivePerson group (the hot leads who were invited to chat) had 530 total sales for the two-week period for a conversion rate of % of visitors. The Control Group (the hot leads who were not invited to chat) had 175 total sales for a conversion rate of 0.146%. Data for this study is provided in Table 1 below. Table 1 Group Visitors 2 weeks Total Sales Self Service Performance Chat Sales Conversion LivePerson 240, % Control Group 120, % If we extrapolate the results for the complete set of visitors (360,000) for the two-week period of time, and look at two conditions: Subjecting all hot leads to the chat invitation (the LivePerson Group) and subjecting none of the visitors to the chat invitation (the Control Group) we can measure the complete impact on the site. The LivePerson Group would register 793 sales and the control group without chat would have registered 524 sales. The LivePerson group would have 269 more sales or 50% more sales versus the non-chat group. In addition, there would be a 13% increase in self-service sales, or 68 more self service sales with the group involved with chat. Table 2 below summarizes these results. Table 2 Group Visitors Total Sales Self Service Performance Chat Sales Conversion LivePerson 360, % Control Group 360, X.146% Sales Lift