CUSTOMER SUCCESS. Shortcuts Creating a Stylistic Digital Engagement Experience

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1 CUSTOMER SUCCESS Shortcuts Creating a Stylistic Digital Engagement Experience 2014

2 Overview Specialty software provider Shortcuts wanted a new channel to engage potential customers of its products for the hair, beauty, and spa industries. The company deployed a live chat solution from LivePerson six months ago, providing a 24-hour sales support channel from three locations worldwide. Agents now field an average of 15 to 20 live chat conversations daily, with results that include 52 qualified leads from live chat, resulting in nine sales totaling AU$120,000 to date. Founded in 1993, Shortcuts provides software solutions for the hair, beauty, and spa industries. More than 130 employees serve 14,000 customers in 45 countries from the Brisbane, Australia headquarters and offices in Manchester, U.K. and Huntington Beach, California. The Challenges Increase sales through a new live chat engagement channel Provide a non-intrusive way for potential customers to have questions answered. In 1993, a hairdresser named Jo Burgess was looking for computer software to help manage her Brisbane salon. I was lucky enough to stumble across two entrepreneurial developers who were straight out of university, she recalls. I asked them to look with me at what was available in the market, and we discovered there wasn t anything really good. So they decided that they would write me something. Shortly after the software was in place at Burgess salon, the Shortcuts solution was born. That s how it started two programmers and a hairdresser, reflects Burgess, who now leads the Evolution department that is responsible for Shortcuts product management and development. Twenty years later, Shortcuts is a leading IT platform in the hair, beauty, and spa market. The company s 14,000 clients in 45 countries include individual salons, global chains, and everything in between. Shortcuts solutions cover everything needed to run a successful salon appointment booking, cash register, tracking and ordering of supplies and inventory, marketing and loyalty programs, reporting, and more. The firm s cloud-based booking system generates over $3 million in bookings each month. The Solution Engagement Model : 24-hour live chat channel for sales inquiries. Under the Hood : LiveEngage platform with proactive live chat and rulesbased targeting. The Results average live chat conversations per day 52 qualified leads from live chat in 6 months 9 live chat-assisted sales in 6 months, for a total of AU$120,000 2

3 We re moving toward a lead nurturing approach rather than trying to do the hard sale all the time. Jo Burgess, Co-founder and Evolution Manager, Shortcuts Building sales with a softer approach Sales of the Shortcuts solution in English-speaking countries is conducted in house, with field representatives supported by office-based Business Development professionals in the company s Australia, U.K., and U.S. locations. About a year ago, the Australian sales manager decided to deploy a live chat engagement channel through which sales people could answer questions from prospects. It was a part of a change in our sales strategy, Burgess explains. We re moving toward a lead nurturing approach to sales rather than trying to do the hard sale all the time. We knew that a lot of people are reluctant to fill out an inquiry form because they dread being hounded over the phone by a salesperson. So we wanted to offer another engagement option. Geraldine McGill, Shortcuts new business sales manager, took the lead in deploying live chat for the company. She did online research of several vendors, comparing features and learning more about how live chat might be used most effectively for software sales. The company that developed our website strongly recommended that we go with LivePerson based on its reputation in the marketplace and its forward-looking vision for digital engagement, McGill remembers. Deploying a new look and better engagement Shortcuts purchased three concurrent agents of the LivePerson LiveEngage platform and deployed them in September 2013 as part of a newly redesigned website that had a fresh look and feel and improved content. McGill and the Web development team worked together to incorporate Click-to-Chat buttons into the new design and configure the LiveEngage platform according to the company s needs. McGill then set up conference calls to train Business Development representatives in the three locations on the LiveEngage platform. I also allocated a live chat champion for each country who could liaise with me whenever they received feedback from the local team. The champions also help to share leads across countries, McGill says. Live chat is now available to website visitors 24 hours a day, staffed during local business hours at each location. Business Development professionals stay logged in all day to field inquiries as they come in, completing their other duties between live chat conversations. The consultants sit together, so when a chat request comes in, they collaborate to decide who is the most appropriate one to engage, McGill explains. Starting conversations with proactive chat In addition to the static Click-to-Chat buttons on the Shortcuts website, the company also extends proactive chat invitations to high-value visitors. Anytime our consultants have a free moment, they look for visitors who have been on a product page for a while and approach them manually, McGill relates. We also created a rule that proactively extends an invitation to people who have spent 2½ minutes on a product page. McGill s team is working on formulating additional targeting rules for proactive chat. We want to be able to alert ourselves when somebody has watched a certain video for a certain length of time, when a user goes to the contact inquiry form then leaves that page, and other patterns of user behavior, McGill explains. 3

4 Already having answered their early questions shortens the sales cycle. Geraldine McGill, New Business Sales Manager, Shortcuts Moving leads through the sales cycle To help agents answer questions more efficiently, McGill and her global colleagues have loaded around 25 canned answers to frequently asked questions into the LiveEngage platform. To achieve optimal effectiveness, agents are encouraged to alter those answers to reflect their own personality and the context of the conversations. We re trying to coach our consultants to be more informal in live chat conversations, McGill says. This better reflects the culture of instant messaging and texting, and also the culture of our company. Leads generated through live chat are manually entered into the company s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. We are planning to replace our CRM system this year, and hope to integrate the new CRM with our LiveEngage platform to automate some of this, Burgess describes. Leads are then ed to the appropriate field sales consultant for nurturing. Improved sales with a new channel After six months of operating a live chat engagement channel, sales professionals in the field are finding that many of the leads they receive are further along in the sales cycle because their initial questions have been answered via live chat. Even in cases where customers don t provide their details in the initial live chat conversation, we re finding that many of them later make an online or phone inquiry, McGill relates. Already having answered their early questions eliminates up to two steps of the sales cycle, because the sales teams already know many of the requirements through the live chat conversation. Shortcuts sales professionals around the world now conduct an average of 15 to 20 chat conversations per 24 hour period. The traffic is a bit lower on Monday and Tuesday, and it increases later in the week, McGill observes. But we notice that more new business inquiries happen earlier in the week, while existing client inquiries come later in the week. And those conversations have started turning into sales. We have had 52 qualified business leads through live chat in six months, McGill reports. From those leads, we have sold nine full Shortcuts Hair/Beauty/Spa or Clinic license packages. In total, we generated about AU$120, live chat-assisted worth of business since we started. A bright future As Burgess and McGill look to the future, they predict that digital engagement will be a factor in an increasing percentage of Shortcuts revenue as awareness of the channel grows. They are anxious to refine their targeting rules for proactive chat and are also looking into whether LivePerson s mobile Click-to-Chat tool might help them effectively engage with growing numbers of customers who visit the website using mobile devices. Our own solutions are mobile-friendly, so many of our customers may be doing research for a solution via mobile device as well, Burgess notes. Whatever the trends, Burgess will make sure that Shortcuts stays current with the way its customers want to do business, and she expects the same of LivePerson. We believe that they will be able to meet our needs for a long time to come, she sums up. 4

5 The reps sit together, so when a chat request comes in, they collaborate on who will respond. Geraldine McGill, New Business Sales Manager, Shortcuts 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 5