CUSTOMER SUCCESS UberGlobal Enhancing Support and Sales with Personalized Engagement 2014
Overview UberGlobal is Australia s third largest cloud services provider by market share. Founded in 2002 by 14 year old Michael McGoogan, the company serves 110,000 customers ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. Business results Customer Experience 75% customer satisfaction rate for live chat channel Technical Support 3-minute average time to resolution for technical support issues, compared with 5 minutes by phone Leading Australian cloud services provider UberGlobal needed an effective, efficient way to scale Technical Support Services while driving incremental sales for its offerings. The company turned to LivePerson about a year ago, deploying a digital engagement solution that includes proactive live chat and content targeting. The company is quite pleased with the results: 36 percent of calls are being deflected to live chat with an average time to resolution of three minutes. In addition to the customer service benefits, UberGlobal is seeing e-commerce benefits as well, including a 23 percent of sales assisted by live chat. Since many of these sales are incremental, this is new revenue for UberGlobal. From his Canberra, Australia bedroom in 2002, 14-year-old Michael McGoogan founded McGooHQ, a reseller of U.S.-based hosting services. By 2005, the company had grown to become AussieHQ, one of Australia s fastest-growing Web service providers. Today, the company is called UberGlobal, and it is the country s third-largest cloud services provider by market share. One factor in the company s rapid growth has been its ability to respond nimbly to market trends. When I joined the company five years ago, we provided hosting and services using physical, dedicated servers, recalls Daniel Muller, deputy operations manager at UberGlobal. But four years ago, management realized that physical server hosting was coming to an end and made the decision to move everything into the cloud. That was definitely the right move for our customers. The company now offers almost anything a business might need in terms of IT infrastructure regardless of company size through a cloud-based platform. Ability of phone agents to assist via mobile device for after-hours deployments Operational Efficiency 36% deflection of phone support to live chat (from 5,500 to 3,500 calls per month) Estimated 2 FTE cost savings for phone support agents via live chat 95% reduction in time to resolution for certain cases via desktop sharing feature Sales Results 23% of total sales assisted by live chat, much of it incremental revenue 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 2
The Challenges Reduce technical support costs with more efficient channel Drive incremental revenue via digital engagement with sales contacts Live chat agents can immediately see what customers see on their screens, and agents can handle up to three conversations at a time. Daniel Muller, Deputy Operations Manager, UberGlobal Enable quick answers to questions during overnight IT maintenance The Solution Engagement Model: Live chat for sales and technical support Under the Hood: LiveEngage platform with static and proactive live chat, Predictive Targeting, content targeting, and desktop sharing LivePerson Customer Success: Deployment assistance and ongoing consultation and scorecards The need to deliver effective service This strategy drove further growth in the company, and Muller s technical support team eventually became inundated with phone calls. The company was growing, and the percentage of inquiries that needed real-time engagement rather than just a support ticket was increasing, he remembers. When the percentage of inquiries handled by phone rather than support ticket hit 50 percent, Muller knew that something had to be done. I put together a business case, and management approved the hire of four agents that would be dedicated to a new live chat channel, he explains. Deploying a digital engagement solution This strategy drove further growth in the company, and Muller s technical support team eventually became inundated with phone calls. The company was growing, and the percentage of inquiries that needed real-time engagement rather than just a support ticket was increasing, he remembers. When he heard that Muller was going to deploy a live chat solution, Business Development Manager Dean Milton requested that sales included in the deployment. I saw a lot of potential in live chat for lead generation and nurturing, so I requested a license for our team, he explains. And we discussed what features would be helpful to make live chat into a sales tool. Muller conducted a thorough search for a solution, and LivePerson s LiveEngage platform quickly rose to the top of the list. They re one of the larger players in the industry, and they offer a really good platform for both sales and service, Muller relates. You can use proactive chat, predictive targeting, and marketing campaigns. The logging is excellent so we can monitor agents workloads, and the API access is excellent for integrating LivePerson into our existing system. There were all sorts of features that just weren t available anywhere else. With these requirements in mind, UberGlobal selected LivePerson. The solution went live a year ago, starting with three concurrent agent licenses two for the support team and one for sales. Increasing effectiveness for technical support Static Click-to-Chat buttons are now prominently placed in UberGlobal s knowledge base and in the client management portal that UberGlobal customers use every day to manage their cloud solutions. We also have a Click-to-Chat link in the footer of our automated email that summarizes the resolution of a support ticket, in the event that a customer has an additional question, Muller explains. The live chat agent can see when an inquiry comes in via email link and can pull up the relevant ticket for context. 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 3
Predictive Targeting enables us to extend a live chat invitation at the precise time when it s most likely to be effective. Dean Milton, Business Development Manager, UberGlobal The LiveEngage platform enables agents to see the Web page a customer is looking at during a live chat conversation, which saves time in resolving an issue. And when necessary, agents are able to use the desktop sharing feature in the LiveEngage platform to remotely make adjustments to a customer s PC. We find that really handy for setting up things like email clients, Muller notes. I ve seen what would have been a 40-minute support call resolved in two minutes through a remote desktop session. Providing support after hours The regular hours of the live chat channel for customer support are from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Sydney time on weekdays, but most changes made to IT environments occur on nights and weekends. As a result, agents assisting with these maintenance efforts often use the LiveEngage platform after hours to provide help as needed to technicians at the customer site. When an UberGlobal shift change occurs during a maintenance project, customers can rest assured that they will not have to repeat their entire situation to the new person. Incoming agents can look at the live chat transcripts from earlier in the evening to get context on what is happening at a customer site, Muller notes. Improving sales through digital engagement On the sales side, Milton s team uses the LiveEngage platform proactively to drive revenue for UberGlobal. Of our six sales professionals, two are general sales reps who work leads from the office, he explains. They staff live chat lines during business hours for all of Australia s time zones. In addition to the Click-to-Chat buttons on UberGlobal s support-related pages, Click-to-Chat buttons can be found on various product pages. And proactive live chat invitations are extended to high-value visitors based on their behavior but only when the LiveEngage platform detects that an agent is available. Targeting for the proactive invitations is currently rules-based, but Milton s team plans to roll out Predictive Targeting in July 2014. Predictive Targeting will help us avoid managing the rules, and enable us to extend a live chat invitation at the precise time when it s most likely to be effective based on the most up-to-date trend data, Milton relates. IT professionals tend to want to be left alone until they re ready to engage, so this tool helps us to engage in a way that seems less intrusive. Milton s team also uses the content targeting tool in the LiveEngage platform to push offers and other marketing materials to select visitors. We target visitors based on the particular page they re on, Milton explains. We have some products that complement each other such as our hosted Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync offerings. As a result, when a visitor is browsing on the Exchange page, we might send a pop-up telling them about a promotion we re running with SharePoint or Lync. This results in an upsell opportunity for us, and gives customers a chance to get what they really need. Benefiting from ongoing help and advice UberGlobal s LivePerson Customer Success manager has been working with Muller and Milton from day one. He made sure our initial deployment was successful, but he has been especially valuable as an ongoing advisor, Milton contends. He explained the benefits of Predictive Targeting and helped us design a strategy for using the content targeting tool. In the next few months, UberGlobal plans to work with the Customer Success manager to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the digital engagement program that will be tracked in the next financial year, which begins on July 1. 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 4
Impressive results for technical support UberGlobal s Technical Support Services team currently fields 2,000 live chat conversations monthly, and all of those conversations represent deflections from phone support. Phone support inquiries have gone down from 5,500 to 3,500 per month a 36 percent reduction, Muller reports. As live chat volume has increased, Muller has added new concurrent agents to the deployment, and the current count is five for support and one for sales. This call deflection rate represents significant cost savings for the company, as live chat requires much less staff time per inquiry. Live chat agents can immediately see what customers see on their screens, and agents can handle up to three live chat conversations at a time, he says. I m quite confident that had we not implemented live chat, we would have needed to add six new phone service agents by now, compared with our four live chat agents. UberGlobal s customer base seems to really like the availability of live chat, and the channel receives a 75 percent customer satisfaction rate in exit surveys. Customers who need support appreciate the ease with which they can access the Click-to-Chat button from the customer control panel, Muller describes. Average resolution time for support issues is around three minutes for the live chat channel, compared with five minutes by phone. The average phone call time has actually been increasing, Muller notes. We see that as a good thing, as we know that the basic questions are being covered by live chat now, leaving the more complex questions for phone agents. And while customers often want to stay on the line with a phone agent until every issue is resolved, they feel comfortable ending a live chat session and starting another one if needed. Incremental revenue through chat-assisted sales On the sales side, live chat-assisted sales now account for 23 percent of UberGlobal s sales. While the average order value (AOV) of these transactions is lower than with phone sales, Milton s analysis shows that much of it is incremental revenue for UberGlobal. Without live chat, we probably would not have closed many of these sales, and we rely on sales of all sizes to run a successful business, he asserts. The content targeting tool also brings incremental revenue for UberGlobal, particularly through cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Incremental revenue through chat-assisted sales On the sales side, live chat-assisted sales now account for 23 percent of UberGlobal s sales. While the average order value (AOV) of these transactions is lower than with phone sales, Milton s analysis shows that much of it is incremental revenue for UberGlobal. Without live chat, we probably would not have closed many of these sales, and we rely on sales of all sizes to run a successful business, he asserts. The content targeting tool also brings incremental revenue for UberGlobal, particularly through cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Exciting future plans As live chat conversations continue to grow, Muller is making plans to cross-train his entire Technical Support Services team so that all of them can be deployed to live chat or phone support as needed. We are thinking that it might be good for agents to work part of the day on phones and part on chat, Muller explains. And although most customers are at their desktops or laptops when they contact the support team, Muller is looking into whether LivePerson s mobile Click-to-Chat tool might be useful for customers. Some technicians might need help when something comes up over lunch hour, for example, he observes. 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 5
Another important near-term project is further integrating the LiveEngage platform with UberGlobal s Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and its Parallels Automation cloud service delivery platform. When a client initiates a live chat conversation, we would like our agents to have the background information about their deployment and sales history at their fingertips, Muller explains. Our Customer Success manager has already given us some really good ideas about how to make that happen. Milton s sales team is also evaluating whether the enrichment analytics tools in the LiveEngage platform, or even the advanced analysis tools in LivePerson Insights, would be able to help the company s efforts at search engine optimization. We recently engaged with a Web development company to work with our internal team to start optimizing key words on the website, he reports. The ultimate result will be a fully refreshed website, and we believe that analysis of live chat conversations may make positive contributions to the project. An asset for the company After a year of digital engagement with LivePerson, Muller and Milton have no regrets. I think most people are nervous about deploying something like live chat, because they want to have something that makes money rather than costing money, Muller observes. Every aspect of our experience with LivePerson has been positive. After just a year of use, the solution has easily been a net positive for our bottom line both in reducing the cost of support and increasing sales. You can t ask for more than that. Milton s team also uses the content targeting tool in the LiveEngage platform to push offers and other marketing materials to select visitors. We target visitors based on the particular page they re on, Milton explains. We have some products that complement each other such as our hosted Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync offerings. As a result, when a visitor is browsing on the Exchange page, we might send a pop-up telling them about a promotion we re running with SharePoint or Lync. This results in an upsell opportunity for us, and gives customers a chance to get what they really need. 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: 212.991.1794 475 Tenth Ave F: 212.609.4233 5th Floor info@liveperson.com New York, NY 10018 www.liveperson.com 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 6