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Consumer hold times evaporate as LivePerson sees massive shift from phones to messaging in the COVID era
Thursday, July 2, 2020
HSBC, Optus, GM Financial, David's Bridal, Zurich Switzerland, and more launch new messaging channels, accelerate remote work, and enable social distancing through LivePerson's AI-powered solutions
NEW YORK, June 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Faced with social distancing requirements and extreme hold times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, brands worldwide have quickly shifted resources and accelerated plans to connect with their customers through messaging, and consumers are responding. LivePerson, Inc. (Nasdaq: LPSN), a global leader in conversational solutions, is powering these experiences for financial services, retail, telco, travel, and other businesses as well as state and local governments.
Messaging channels -- including SMS, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more -- allow consumers to begin conversations when and where it's convenient for them, pausing when needed and seamlessly picking up where they left off, just as they would when texting friends or family. By layering in automation and AI, brands and government agencies can instantly respond to messages, swiftly answer questions and resolve customer intentions, and route more complex issues to agents. These benefits of automation and AI-powered messaging became increasingly important as in-person and phone call capacity decreased due to the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated consumer interest in messaging, with conversation volume on LivePerson's industry-leading Conversational Cloud platform increasing by approximately 40% since shelter-in-place and social distancing requirements were enacted. More specific stats for verticals include: telco volume rose 30%, consumer/retail volume climbed 50%, and financial services volume jumped 60%.
To meet demand, protect their customers and workforces, and provide more seamless service, more and more brands and government agencies are making conversational experiences a vital part of their operations:
-- HSBC USA, a division of one of the world's largest banking and financial
services organizations, swiftly launched its Apple Business Chat
channel, providing customers a secure, seamless way to message directly
with HSBC.
-- HSBC customers now have the flexibility and security to perform
day-to-day banking transactions through Apple's Messages app,
including moving money, managing checking and savings accounts,
handling credit card transactions and receiving other digital
banking assistance.
-- HSBC's deployment incorporates Apple's new Chat Suggest feature,
which offers the option to start a messaging conversation when a
customer taps to call HSBC.
-- Optus, one of Australia's largest telecommunications companies, shifted
all of its domestic customer service agents to remote work --
permanently.
-- After losing over 80% of contact center capability due to sudden
closures, Optus accelerated what was once a three-year plan to
increase app use and messaging adoption into a one-year (or less)
plan.
-- By the end of 2020, Optus expects 80% of customer contacts to come
in through messaging. Net Promoter Scores have already significantly
increased.
-- GM Financial, the financial services arm of General Motors, trained 700
employees on LivePerson's platform in the first week of remote working
in order to maintain operations during the pandemic.
-- David's Bridal, the leading bridal authority in the United States, used
AI to support retail staff as they pivoted to messaging from remote
locations.
-- As brick and mortar stores were forced to temporarily close, David's
Bridal ramped up their LivePerson-powered concierge bot Zoey to help
couples faced with replanning one of the most important days of
their lives.
-- In just two weeks, they also trained 300 sales store managers on
LivePerson's Conversational Cloud to message with customers from
their iPads and laptops.
-- Together, these innovations led to higher conversion rates and about
8x higher volume in messaging.
-- A U.S. state in New England deployed a messaging experience to quickly
resolve unemployment benefits questions and provide a seamless way for
constituents to sign up for benefits.
-- Zurich Switzerland, a division of one of the world's largest insurers,
fielded a digital assistant to immediately answer coronavirus-related
questions.
-- Their new assistant was created with LivePerson's Conversation
Builder in less than 24 hours.
-- It is multilingual, supporting customers in German, English, French,
and Italian.
"The tremendous variety of use cases for AI-powered messaging we're seeing -- deployed across all industries at an incredible rate -- proves that the COVID-19 pandemic completely transformed how brands and consumers do business," said Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson. "Like the new normal of Zoom for corporate work, a new normal of AI-powered messaging is emerging for brand-consumer interactions, built and managed by remote agents. We're proud to work with these innovative organizations to make doing business easier and more efficient even in these difficult times."
LivePerson's conversational solutions garnered several recognitions in the first half of 2020, including:
-- Fast Company named LivePerson to its prestigious Most Innovative
Companies list, listing the company as number three in the world's most
innovative AI companies category.
-- Forrester, a leading global research and advisory firm, has named
LivePerson a leader in The Forrester New Wave(TM): Digital-First
Customer Service Solutions, Q2 2020.
-- The CODiE Awards, the tech industry's only peer-reviewed awards program,
named LivePerson's bot-building platform the Best Customer Service
Solution of 2020.
-- The Stevie Awards, the world's top customer service awards program,
awarded LivePerson's bot-building platform the 2020 Gold Stevie® Award
for best New Contact Center Solution.
To learn more about LivePerson's conversational solutions, visit www.liveperson.com.
About LivePerson, Inc.
LivePerson makes life easier for people and brands everywhere through trusted conversational AI. Our 18,000 customers, including leading brands like HSBC, Orange, GM Financial, and The Home Depot, use our conversational solutions to orchestrate humans and AI, at scale, and create a convenient, deeply personal relationship -- a conversational relationship -- with their millions of consumers. For more information about LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN), please visit www.liveperson.com.
Contact: Mike Tague, mtague@liveperson.com
View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consumer-hold-times-evaporate-as-liveperson-sees-massive-shift-from-phones-to-messaging-in-the-covid-era-301082605.html
SOURCE LivePerson, Inc.
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