NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- LivePerson,
Inc. (Nasdaq: LPSN), a leading provider of conversational commerce
solutions, today launched Maven, a conversational AI that enables
brands to replace traditional websites and 800-numbers with
personalized conversations over SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp,
Google RCS Business Messaging, Amazon Alexa, and other popular
messengers and voice assistants. Maven enables not only computer
scientists, but also the millions of agents working in contact
centers to develop conversational AI experiences. This
patent-pending mesh between human agents and AI makes it possible
for brands to have personalized conversations with hundreds of
millions of consumers, outperforming traditional websites and
800-numbers on measures such as customer satisfaction and sales
conversion.
"I watched the first generations of conversational AI and bots
frustrate consumers because the technology relied on decision trees
that could send them in circles," says Robert LoCascio, LivePerson's founder and CEO.
"We created a new direction. Our AI is designed to be taught and
managed by contact center agents. One in 57 Americans works as a
contact center agent, and when paired up with AI, their impact on
the lifetime value of a customer is transformative. Where we once
thought that AI would replace people, especially in contact
centers, we know now that people in contact centers, who converse
with consumers everyday, are the best conversational designers for
AI. We will need this population to create and manage the millions
of AI-powered conversations that will be necessary for consumers to
speak to brands through their home and mobile devices."
LivePerson, a pioneer and market leader in brand-to-consumer
messaging, developed Maven using its conversational data set of
billions of brand-to-consumer interactions. Maven operates as the
brains behind new LivePerson AI-based products that brands use to
create, manage, and capture the most from their conversations with
consumers:
- 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. A
major retail brand that adopted this approach in its sales
operation increased agent productivity 300 percent within 12 weeks
of launch.
- Conversation Intelligence, 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 Intelligence
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 Intelligence to identify and add
new, top-selling items to its menu selection.
Leading direct-to-consumer women's luxury shoe brand Tamara
Mellon is among Maven's early adopters. "We are committed to
delivering a superior experience and have found messaging to be the
most natural and effortless way for us to communicate with our
customers," said Tamara Mellon,
co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Tamara Mellon Brand and formerly the co-founder
of Jimmy Choo. "We are partnering
with LivePerson so that our customers can ask us questions, get
recommendations, and make purchases in the messaging apps and voice
assistants they use everyday. LivePerson's new automation
capabilities give our customers quick answers on topics like
product availability while allowing our team to monitor the
experience and put the finishing touches on conversations where
needed."
Tamara Mellon is not alone.
Gartner's recent report, Market Guide for Conversational Platforms,
forecasts that by 2021, AI will handle 15 percent of all customer
service interactions — an increase of 400 percent from 2017. The
stakes are high. Less than 5 percent of consumers
convert to sales on websites, and 90 percent of consumers dislike
calling an 800-number. The cost of answering the phone calls alone
is more than a trillion dollars per year.
LivePerson's new AI-based products work in concert with its
existing set of conversational commerce capabilities that brands
use to connect with consumers via popular messaging services and
voice assistants, along with their apps, websites, and phone
systems. LivePerson also provides APIs, SDKs, and connectors to
access the myriad third-party systems necessary to fulfill customer
intentions such as checking order status or making changes to a
reservation.
Maven and LivePerson's new AI-based products are accessible via
LivePerson's Early Access Program and will be generally available
in the first quarter of 2019. Brands can apply for the Early Access
Program at www.liveperson.com/ai.
About LivePerson
LivePerson makes life easier by transforming how people
communicate with brands. Our 18,000 customers, including leading
brands like Citibank, HSBC, Orange, and The Home Depot, use our
conversational commerce 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.
Safe Harbor Provision
Statements in this press release regarding LivePerson that are
not historical facts are forward-looking statements and are subject
to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future events or
results to differ materially from such statements. Any such
forward-looking statements, including but not limited to financial
guidance, are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. It is
routine for our internal projections and expectations to change as
the quarter and year progress, and therefore it should be clearly
understood that the internal projections and beliefs upon which we
base our expectations may change. Although these expectations
may change, we are under no obligation to inform you if they
do. Actual events or results may differ materially from those
contained in the projections or forward-looking statements.
Some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ
materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein
include, without limitation: potential fluctuations in our
quarterly revenue and operating results; competition in the market
for digital engagement technology; our ability to retain existing
clients and attract new clients; potential adverse impact due to
foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; privacy concerns
relating to the Internet that could result in new legislation or
negative public perception; risks related to new regulatory or
other legal requirements that could materially impact our business;
our ability to effectively operate on mobile devices; failures or
security breaches in our services, those of our third party
providers, or in the websites of our customers; risks related to
industry-specific regulation and unfavorable industry-specific
laws, regulations or interpretive positions; the adverse effect
that the global economic downturn may have on our business and
results of operations; economic conditions and regulatory changes
caused by the United Kingdom's
likely exit from the European Union; our ability to retain key
personnel, attract new personnel and to manage staff attrition;
risks related to the ability to successfully integrate past or
potential future acquisitions; additional regulatory requirements,
tax liabilities, currency exchange rate fluctuations and other
risks as we expand internationally and/or as we expand into
direct-to-consumer services; risks related to the regulation or
possible misappropriation of personal information belonging to our
customers' Internet users; potential failure to meeting service
level commitments to certain customers; risks related to protecting
our intellectual property rights or potential infringement of the
intellectual property rights of third parties; legal liability
and/or negative publicity for the services provided to consumers
via our technology platforms; technology systems beyond our control
and technology-related defects that could disrupt the LivePerson
services; errors, failures or "bugs" in our products may be
difficult to correct; increased allowances for doubtful accounts as
a result of an increasing amount of receivables due from customers
with greater credit risk; payment-related risks; delays in our
implementation cycles; impairments to goodwill that result in
significant charges to earnings; risks associated with the recent
volatility in the capital markets; our ability to secure additional
financing to execute our business strategy; our ability to license
necessary third party software for use in our products and
services, and our ability to successfully integrate third party
software; our ability to maintain our reputation; risks related to
our recognition of revenue from subscriptions; our lengthy sales
cycles; risks related to our operations in Israel, and the civil and political unrest in
that region; changes in accounting principles generally accepted in
the United States; risks
associated with our current or any future stock repurchase
programs, including whether such programs will enhance long-term
stockholder value, and whether such stock repurchases could
increase the volatility of the price of our common stock and
diminish our cash reserves; natural catastrophic events and
interruption to our business by man-made problems; the high
volatility of our stock price; and risks related to our common
stock being traded on more than one securities exchange. This list
is intended to identify only certain of the principal factors that
could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in the
forward-looking statements. Readers are referred to the
reports and documents filed from time to time by us with the
Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of these and
other important factors that could cause actual results to differ
from those discussed in forward-looking statements.
Contact
Allison Franzese
afranzese@liveperson.com
212.609.4224
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SOURCE LivePerson, Inc.