With LiveOps, All Customer Channels Are Created Equal

LiveOps this week debuted LiveOps Engage, a browser-based desktop agent app that centralizes myriad channels — phone, email, live chat, SMS, Twitter and Facebook — on one screen. The screen also displays the history of past interactions with the customer.

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“This release is bringing together all of the channels of communication, both inbound and outbound,” CEO Marty Beard told CRM Buyer.

These various elements allow agents to respond to customers in the channel the customer prefers, or move to the channel best suited to resolve the issue, Beard said. “The agent does not have to open different applications or use a different screen to access these different channels.”

A Productivity Engine

The agent desktop app delivers significant productivity as a result of its design, Beard also said. “On average, a contact center agent would have to open six to eight apps to deal with inbound or outbound multichannel communications.”

LiveOps Engage doesn’t emphasize one channel over another, such as phone versus email or chat versus social media. That is because no one channel dominates customer communication, Beard said. “Social is not blowing away voice and chat is not taking away attention from email.”

How It Works

LiveOps client Royal Mail serves as a good example of how a typical application would work, Beard said. “Say somebody tweets their package did not show up. The agent would see that, and respond back via Twitter that they saw the tweet — and would the customer discuss the issue in greater detail via a chat? Then the agent would send a link to the customer.” The link would direct the customer to a Web chat session with the same agent.

“The agent has pivoted the customer from the public to a private channel where you can have a more in-depth conversation,” Beard pointed out.

Screen Real Estate

There is a lot of activity on the screen for the agent to monitor, including the past interaction history, but LiveOps was careful in designing the app, Beard said.

Agents who log into the system will first see their queue of work by channel. Then, when they start processing a particular work stream, they’ll see the transaction history of the individual person.

“We used a familiar Web format that would be easy for agents to use. It is not cluttered at all,” emphasized Beard, and it’s “based on point-and-click.”

LiveOps delivers significant productivity savings, based on a recent survey of multichannel agents. LiveOps Engage delivers a 25-50 percent increase in agent productivity, the results suggest, as well as a 25 percent increase in overall cost savings.