NEW YORK, June 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LivePerson, Inc.
(Nasdaq: LPSN), a leading provider of cloud mobile and online
business messaging solutions, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have announced
LiveEngage with Watson, the first
global, enterprise-scale, out-of-the-box integration of
Watson-powered bots with human
agents. The new offering combines IBM's Watson Virtual Agent
technology with LivePerson's LiveEngage platform, allowing brands
to rapidly and easily deploy conversational bots that get smarter
with each interaction, and lets consumers message those brands from
their smartphone - via the brand's app, SMS, Facebook Messenger, or
even the brand's mobile site - instead of having to call an 800
number.
The customer care sector has lagged behind consumers in terms of
technology adoption, still requiring most interactions to be
conducted by analog voice call. In fact, customers make more than
270 billion phone calls to customer support lines each
year1.
This legacy approach has not kept pace with the consumer move to
smartphones and messaging apps, now the dominant way consumers
communicate digitally. Forrester's 2017 Customer Service Trends
report revealed that "Customers of all ages are moving away from
using the phone to using self-service — web and mobile
self-service, communities, virtual agents, automated chat dialogs,
or chatbots — as a first point of contact with a company" and,
according to Dimension Data, while there has been a 12 percent
decline in phone volume, there has been growth in every digital
channel2.
LiveEngage with Watson helps
meet that demand - allowing consumers to message large brands from
their smartphones and instantly get answers from AI-powered bots,
with human care representatives brought in seamlessly, in
real-time, if a bot is not able to resolve an issue
satisfactorily.
The move will help enable millions of consumers to avoid the
frustrating experience of legacy, voice-based customer support,
which requires them to dial an 800 number, wait on hold, then talk
to an agent, and often multiple agents over multiple phone
calls.
LiveEngage with Watson gives
brands the ability to customize bots based on their own unique
corpuses of data – from product manuals to customer service
guidelines – creating a personalized interaction that can be up and
running as quickly as in a few days. These bots can be
informational, personalized, and transactional - quickly addressing
the most commonly raised customer service issues such as taking
bill payments and finding contact information - while bringing in
human expertise when necessary to drive effective customer
engagement.
"Providing customer care over 800 numbers is not just extremely
costly — it is a poor and antiquated experience for consumers,"
says Robert LoCascio, founder and
CEO of LivePerson. "Nobody likes waiting on hold. This partnership
between IBM and LivePerson marries the technology and services to
solve the problem at scale. We're working with top brands in the
telecoms and banking space right now to get this done, moving
customer care away from costly, analog voice calls with frustrating
hold times and toward consumer-friendly mobile messaging. We're
thrilled to form this partnership. No other company but IBM brings
this sophistication of cognitive technology and breadth of
supporting consulting and implementation services."
"LiveEngage with Watson is
designed to meet the needs of today's 'always on' consumers and
deliver the sort of timely, high quality brand experience that they
expect," says David Kenny, senior
vice president, IBM Watson and Cloud Platform. "By combining the
power of IBM Watson and LivePerson's LiveEngage platform, we are
expecting to accelerate customer service as we know it today by
leaps and bounds. This is yet another powerful example of how
cognitive technologies like Watson
are helping professionals improve and enhance how they interact
with customers."
As business decisions continue to be made with the help of AI,
customer care will be no different. IBM Global Business Services,
the company's consulting unit, is providing a set of strategy and
implementation services to help companies integrate LiveEngage with
Watson as part of their broader
business transformation. By building experiences that learn, and
adapt, into core processes, companies can deliver better engagement
with customers. Together with LivePerson, IBM plans to operate a
Cognitive Care Center of Excellence to help enable brands to drive
this change at scale.
About IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of
Computing
Watson
represents a new era in computing called cognitive computing, where
systems understand the world in a way more similar to humans:
through senses, learning, and experience. Watson continuously learns from previous
interactions, gaining in value and knowledge over time. With the
help of Watson, organizations are
harnessing the power of cognitive computing to transform
industries, help professionals do their jobs better, and solve
important challenges.
As part of IBM's strategy to accelerate the growth of cognitive
computing, Watson is open to the
world, allowing a growing community of developers, students,
entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts to easily tap into the most
advanced and diverse cognitive computing platform available today.
Watson solutions are being built,
used, and deployed in more than 45 countries and across 20
different industries.
For more information on IBM Watson, visit ibm.com/watson. Join
the conversation at #ibmwatson.
About IBM Global Business Service
For more
information, visit http://www.ibm.com/services/gbs.
About LivePerson
LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:
LPSN) is the leading provider of mobile and online messaging
business solutions, enabling a meaningful connection between brands
and consumers. LiveEngage, the Company's enterprise-class,
cloud-based platform, empowers consumers to stop wasting time on
hold with 1-800 numbers, and instead message their favorite brands,
just as they do with friends and family. More than 18,000
businesses, including Adobe, Citibank, HSBC, EE, IBM, L'Oréal, PNC,
and The Home Depot, rely on the unparalleled intelligence,
security, and scalability of LiveEngage to reduce costs, increase
lifetime value, and create meaningful connections with consumers.
For more information, please visit www.liveperson.com. To view
other global press releases about LivePerson, please visit
pr.liveperson.com.
Media Contacts:
Samantha Mayowa, IBM, (401) 419-9569,
sbmayowa@us.ibm.com
Rurik Bradbury, LivePerson, (212)
609-4249, rbradbury@liveperson.com
1
https://www.ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/cognitive-business-lessons/customer-service.html
2
http://blogs.forrester.com/kate_leggett/17-01-30-top_trends_for_customer_service_in_2017_operations_become_smarter_and_more_strategic
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SOURCE IBM