LivePerson Profile
LivePerson, Inc. (LivePerson) is a global leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered customer conversations. LivePerson has enabled meaningful connections between consumers and the company’s customers.
The Conversational Cloud, the company’s enterprise-class cloud-based platform, enables businesses to have conversations with millions of consumers as personally as they would with a single consumer. The Conversational Cloud powers conversations across each of a brand’s primary digital channels, including mobile apps, mobile and desktop web browsers, SMS, social media, and third-party consumer messaging platforms. Brands can also use the Conversational Cloud to message consumers when they dial a 1-800 number instead of forcing them to navigate IVRs and wait on hold. Similarly, the Conversational Cloud can ingest traditional emails and convert them into messaging conversations, or embed messaging conversations directly into web advertisements, rather than redirect consumers to static website landing pages. Agents can manage all conversations with consumers through a single console interface, regardless of where the conversations originated.
LivePerson’s robust, cloud-based suite of rich messaging, real-time chat, AI and automation offerings features consumer and agent facing bots, intelligent routing and capacity mapping, real-time intent detection and analysis, queue prioritization, customer sentiment, analytics and reporting, content delivery, PCI compliance, co-browsing, and a sophisticated proactive targeting engine. An extensible API stack facilitates an ownership by facilitating robust integration into back-end systems, as well as enabling developers to build their own programs and services on top of the platform.
LivePerson’s Conversational AI platform enables what the company calls the tango of humans, AI and bots, whereby human agents act as bot managers, overseeing AI-powered conversations and seamlessly stepping into the flow when a personal touch is needed. Agents become ultra-efficient, leveraging the AI engine to serve up relevant content, define next-best actions and take over repetitive transactional work so that the agent can focus on relationship building. By seamlessly integrating messaging with the company’s proprietary Conversational AI, as well as third-party bots, the Conversational Cloud offers brands a comprehensive approach to scaling automations across their millions of customer conversations.
Complementing the company’s proprietary messaging and Conversational AI offerings are teams of technical, solutions and consulting professionals that have developed deep domain expertise in the implementation and optimization of conversational services across industries and messaging endpoints. LivePerson’s products, coupled with the company’s domain knowledge, industry expertise and professional services, have been proven to maximize the impact of Conversational AI and deliver measurable return on investment for its customers.
Strategy
The company’s strategy is to continue to enhance the Conversational AI engine and related products, by leveraging its global R&D footprint and substantial library of mobile and online conversational data, with the aim of increasing agent efficiency, decreasing customer care costs, improving the customer experience and increasing customer lifetime value.
The key elements of LivePerson’s business solutions strategy are to increase messaging volumes by developing a broad ecosystem, expanding customer use cases, and focusing on AI and automation; attract the industry’s best AI, machine learning and conversational talent; strengthen its position in both existing and new industries; leverage its open architecture to integrate with other systems and support partners and developers; expand sales partnerships to broaden its presence and accelerate sales cycles; and evaluate strategic alliances and acquisitions when appropriate.
Products and Services
Business solutions offerings
The Conversational Cloud: The Conversational Cloud, LivePerson’s enterprise-class, cloud-based platform, enables businesses and consumers to connect through conversational interfaces, such as in-app and mobile messaging, while leveraging bots and AI to increase efficiency. The platform, which is marketed primarily to managers of digital and customer care, as well as e-commerce, marketing, and contact center executives, combines sophisticated mobile and online engagement technology with robust business intelligence and big data to produce compelling, measurable results by intelligently engaging consumers based on a real-time understanding of consumer needs. Rich, contextually aware targeting, actionable insights and personalized experiences, empower businesses to get the most out of their existing online, mobile and social platforms. Potential benefits of the Conversational Cloud include increased agent efficiency, decreased customer care costs, improved customer experiences, higher conversion rates and increased customer lifetime value.
The Conversational Cloud enables the combination of real time on-site data and off-site behavioral data, with a broad set of historical and operational data. Proprietary analytics utilize this data to target end users with compelling engagement options at any step in the conversion funnel and throughout the customer lifecycle. The platform enables customers to maximize online revenue opportunities, improve conversion rates and reduce shopping cart abandonment by proactively engaging the right visitor, using the right channel, at the right time. The company’s solution identifies segments of website visitors who demonstrate the highest propensity to convert, and engages them in real-time with relevant content and offers, helping to generate incremental sales.
LivePerson’s Conversational AI: LivePerson’s Conversational AI, announced in December 2018, operates as the brains behind new LivePerson AI-based products, and was developed using the company’s conversational data set of millions of brand-to-consumer interactions. LivePerson’s Conversational AI was custom designed for the Conversational Space, enabling what the company calls the tango of humans, AI and bots, whereby human agents act as bot managers, overseeing AI-powered conversations and seamlessly stepping into the flow when a personal touch is needed. Through the Conversational Cloud, agents become ultra-efficient, leveraging the AI engine to serve up relevant content, define next-best actions and take over repetitive transactional work so that the agent can focus on relationship building. By seamlessly integrating the Conversational Cloud with its proprietary AI, as well as third-party bots, the platform provides businesses with a comprehensive view of all AI-based and human-based conversations from a single console. Some of the first products developed on LivePerson’s Conversational AI engine include:
Conversation Builder, which non-technical staff, such as contact center agents use to design high-quality automated conversations. The conversations are not built from scratch. Conversation Builder creates the initial versions by mining a brand’s existing conversation transcripts. Prebuilt industry templates are also available, providing the dialogue and integrations necessary for common use cases, such as billing.
Conversation Manager, a console that suggests automated responses and next best actions to contact center agents, who edit and select from them. Edits and selections dynamically improve the responses and next best actions. When the content reaches a brand-set accuracy threshold, it can be offered to consumers without human intervention. Conversation Manager also includes sentiment monitoring to alert contact center agents to conversations that require their attention. Designed for use in large contact centers, Conversation Manager sends these requests to agents who have the capacity and appropriate skills to respond.
Conversation Analytics, dashboards and reporting which take the true voice of the customer - their direct discussions with a brand, spoken in their natural language - and turn it into actionable sales and service intelligence. A major wireless provider using early versions of Conversation Analytics reported the product identifies the root cause of service issues faster than monitoring software, enabling the provider to accelerate the fix and reduce inbound customer inquiries. A leading hospitality firm used Conversation Analytics to identify and add new, top-selling items to its menu selection.
Intent Manager, a real-time intent recognition and classification engine that analyzes consumer intentions at every turn of the conversation. Intent Manager is powered by LivePerson’s proprietary natural language understanding capabilities and machine learning algorithms, which are grounded in over 20+ years of conversational data and more than one billion messaging transcripts across a variety of industries. Intent Manager is being used by top brands to gain real-time insights and take action to improve customer service, marketing, and sales automation.
Performance Optimizer, a measurement tool to help brands to measure and manage the health of their conversational operations in a single self-service dashboard. Performance Optimizer measures critical metrics for conversational experiences and uses AI to automatically assess performance, provide actionable insights, and deliver executive reporting.
Professional Services
The mission of the company’s Professional Services team is to help customers optimize the performance of its products in order to drive incremental value through their mobile and online sales and/or service channel(s). This talented group utilizes their deep domain expertise and years of hands-on experience to provide customers with detailed analyses and measurements of their LivePerson deployment that drive strategies and decisions on how to optimize mobile and online messaging, real-time chat, and bot and AI integration.
WildHealth
In the first quarter of 2022, the company acquired WildHealth, Inc. (WildHealth), which leverages advanced machine learning to combine DNA analysis, biometrics, microbiome testing and phenotypic data to provide people with a blueprint for truly optimized health and a maximized health span. The acquisition is part of the company’s strategy to pursue the adoption of its technology-driven offerings in the healthcare space by combining a rich healthcare data platform with Conversational AI to enable B2B healthcare brands to scale and personalize patient engagement.
e-Bot7
In the third quarter of 2021, the company acquired German conversational AI company e-bot7 GmbH (e-bot7). The company expects the acquisition to empower brands of all sizes to quickly launch AI-powered messaging experiences — as well as its continued growth in Europe.
Tenfold
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the company acquired Callinize Inc., doing business as Tenfold (Tenfold), a customer experience integration platform that enables enterprises to modernize customer experience tools without having to replace legacy systems. Tenfold helps transform voice networks and contact center providers without impacting day-to-day operations. Its customers include brands, such as Wayfair, TransAmerica, and Sixt. The company intends to maintain Tenfold’s business operations while integrating and leveraging Tenfold’s technology platform with its proprietary messaging and Conversational AI offerings. With Tenfold, LivePerson messaging becomes available to agents anywhere — embedded in a CRM, on the agent’s desktop, or in the brand’s own integrated systems. Once fully integrated, as a voice platform-agnostic, blended system, the company expects the offering also to provide enhanced flexibility for brands to work with any voice vendor and complement LivePerson messaging without impacting agent experience and productivity.
VoiceBase
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the company acquired VoiceBase, Inc. (VoiceBase), a voice analytics platform for the enterprise, built on advanced speech recognition technology, that transforms voice and messaging conversations into easily interpreted data and actionable insights. It works with leading brands, such as GrubHub, Twilio, Delta Dental, UserTesting, and Slice, and has out-of-the-box integrations with leading telephony and contact-center systems, including RingCentral, Genesys, NICE CXone, Avaya, Twilio, and LivePerson. The company intends to maintain VoiceBase’s business operations while integrating and leveraging VoiceBase’s technology with its proprietary messaging and Conversational AI offerings.
Consumer Services Offering
The company’s consumer services offering is an online marketplace that connects Experts who provide information and knowledge for a fee via mobile and online messaging with Users. Users seek assistance and advice in various categories, including personal counseling and coaching, computers and programming, education and tutoring, spirituality and religion, and other topics. The business comprising the company’s consumer services offering has been classified as assets held for sale as of December 31, 2022.
Customers
More than 18,000 customers have deployed the company’s business solutions, including Fortune 500 companies, dedicated internet businesses, a broad range of online merchants, as well as numerous SMBs, automotive dealers, universities, libraries, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations. The company’s solutions benefit organizations of all sizes conducting business or communicating with consumers through mobile and online messaging and chat. The company plans to continue to focus on key target markets: consumer/retail, telecommunications, financial services, travel/hospitality, technology, healthcare, and automotive, within the U.S. and Canada, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Sales and Marketing
Sales: The company’s mobile and online messaging solutions are targeted at business executives whose primary responsibility is optimization of customer care, sales and marketing, or optimizing a consumer’s journey across the brand’s digital properties. The company’s solutions enable organizations to provide effective customer service, sales and marketing by deflecting costly phone calls and emails to the more cost efficient mobile and online messaging channel. The company focuses on the value that its solutions deliver in the form of increased agent efficiency, reduced contact center costs, increased customer satisfaction, improved customer lifetime value, maximized digital consumer acquisition, and optimized website and mobile business outcomes.
Within the business solutions segment the company has aligned its field organization to address the different sales strategies of its target markets:
Enterprise and Large Mid-Market: The company targets enterprises which have thousands of agents in their contact centers and collectively connect with billions of consumers each year. The company leverages thought leadership and related events to showcase its strength in messaging and AI, and highlight existing reference customers who share their successes on its platform and how they achieved positive ROIs. Increasingly, the company is working with large third-party system integrators, technology providers and business process outsourcers to supplement its direct sales effort.
Small Business and Small Mid-Market: The company targets small business and small mid-market customers with a mix of direct, online self-service, and third-party partner channels. The company’s customer acquisition strategy centers on leveraging customer word-of-mouth, its leading brand name, online marketing and partnerships. The company also leverages marketing programs and partner resources to promote increased usage and product adoption within these customers.
Indirect Sales: Resources within the company’s organization are focused on developing partnerships to generate revenues via referral partnerships and indirect sales through channel partners. By maximizing market coverage via partners who provide lead referrals and complementary products and services, this channel supports revenue opportunities without incurring the costs associated with traditional direct sales. The company’s acquisition of Tenfold has accelerated its ability to integrate with legacy customer systems, as well as competing or complementary customer service solutions.
Customer Support: The company’s Professional Services group provides deployment support and ongoing business consulting to enterprise and mid-market customers and maintains involvement throughout the engagement lifecycle. All LivePerson customers have access to 24/7 help desk services through messaging, chat, and technical support ticketing.
Marketing: The company has a global team, spread across key geographies that focuses on marketing its brand, products and services to executives responsible for the digital channel, the consumer experience, marketing, sales, IT, and consumer service operations of their organization.
The company’s main focus is on the consumer/retail, telecommunications, financial services, travel/hospitality, technology, healthcare, and automotive industries.
The company’s marketing strategy encompasses a strategic communications approach that integrates public relations, social media, and analyst/influencer relations. Communications seek to highlight key customer success stories, and promote executive thought leadership via contributed content, speaking opportunities and press interviews, to raise LivePerson’s profile and reinforce its position as an industry leader.
Intellectual Property and Proprietary Rights
The company owns a portfolio of patents and patent applications in the United States and internationally and regularly file patent applications to protect intellectual property that is important to its business. As of December 31, 2022, the company had 207 patents issued in the U.S. and abroad, and 241 patents pending. The company had 36 patents awarded in the U.S. during 2022, and added 25 global patents. The company’s patents cover Conversational AI and insights, messaging across various consumer platforms, behavioral analytics and personalization, and agent effectiveness and call center operations.
Competition
The company has current and potential competitors in many different industries, including technology or service providers offering or powering competing digital engagement, contact center, communications, or customer relationship management solutions such as eGain, Genesys, Nuance, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and Twilio; social media, social listening, messaging, artificial intelligence, bots, e-commerce, and/or data and data analytics companies, such as Facebook, Google, and WeChat, which may leverage their existing or future capabilities and consumer relationships to offer competing business-to-business solutions; and large players in the AI space, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI.
History
LivePerson, Inc. was founded in 1995. The company was incorporated in the state of Delaware in 1995.
