Cloud Contact Center Services Profile: LiveOps

VENDOR PROFILE

Cloud Contact Center Services Profile: LiveOps

IDC OPINION

LiveOps, a cloud contact center services provider, has crafted its offerings and messaging around some of the most important trends for contact centers, in particular social, mobile, cloud and customer experience, and now agent experience. During this time of changing consumer preferences, contact center services providers are evolving their offerings to address client needs for cost efficiency and flexibility as well as consumer expectations for multichannel and mobile customer support, and

LiveOps has been a strong and vocal proponent of these trends. Following are important elements that are shaping the evolution of contact centers today:

 Need for cost efficiency and flexibility. Reducing costs consistently comes up at the top of corporate imperatives in IDC demand-side surveys. Companies are looking to do more with less and expecting service providers to be nimble and flexible in delivering services that keep up with the pace of change in business, in particular as it relates to customer interactions (see 2014 U.S. Business Process Outsourcing Buyer Study Results Customer Care BPO

Responses, IDC #250194, July 2014).

 Addressing increasing expectations of consumers. Social and mobile channels are changing how customers interact with businesses. Customers want to use their channels of preference, increasingly via mobile and social channels, and companies need to be prepared to interact on whichever channel the customer chooses in order to ensure satisfaction. In particular, social and mobile interactions are newer means of communication that are adding new dynamics to the contact center. Recent IDC consumer survey data shows that the majority of customers are dissatisfied with the breadth of channels available to interact with companies they do business with (see 2014 U.S. Consumer Communication Preferences Study Results, IDC #253705, January 2015).

 The need for contextual information. Along with the growth of mobile and social interactions comes the customer expectation for a seamless experience. Customers have grown tired of repeating information, experiencing choppy cross-channel interactions, and having their information siloed. Integration of customer data is important to create the seamless

experience. Consumer survey data indicates that over 80% of customers expect contextual information to be carried across channels when interacting with a company.

IN THIS VENDOR PROFILE

SITUATION OVERVIEW

Company Overview

LiveOps, a cloud contact center services provider, is a private company backed by four venture capital partners and has regional offices and customers in North America, Europe, and Australasia. Founded in 2000, LiveOps handles over 3 billion interactions every year, through both its cloud contact center platform and its home agent customer care BPO services. While LiveOps has a deep heritage in customer care interaction services via its home-based agents, it has, in recent years, placed a much more significant focus on the cloud contact center platform part of the business. In 2014, LiveOps formed two separate corporate entities, formally splitting the agent and platform parts of the company. The cloud contact center platform, the focus of this document, is driving much of LiveOps' growth. The cloud platform is a comprehensive contact center functionality application in the cloud, including interactive voice response (IVR), ACD, intelligent multichannel routing, agent management, workforce management, quality monitoring, reporting and analytics, outbound dialing, screen and voice recording applications, and an integrated multichannel plus social agent desktop.

LiveOps Cloud Platform Basics

LiveOps began selling its contact center platform to enterprises in late 2008. There are over 60,000 users on LiveOps' platform, including LiveOps' own community of independent contractor agents. LiveOps has more than 400 customers worldwide and has datacenters in Nevada, New York, the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Auckland, New Zealand. In 2014, LiveOps added datacenters in Sydney, Australia; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

LiveOps' platform offers a comprehensive suite of services, including intelligent IVR with detailed call filtering and data; live call monitoring; intelligent call routing using PSTN, VOIP, or WebRTC; call recording; screen recording; email functionality; desktop API; multichannel routing/queuing and channel pivot (detailed below under "Multichannel desktop — LiveOps Engage" bullet point); screen recording; call flow authoring; scheduled and priority call back; reporting; dashboards; workflow management; and Web collaboration.

LiveOps has three primary go-to-market campaigns: standalone cloud, embedded, and platform as a service (PaaS). The standalone offer is sold both directly and through partners, with LiveOps CRM functionality. The embedded offer, aimed at customers that want to integrate call center functionalities into their existing CRM platform, is offered through major CRM partners such as Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Both the standalone and embedded offers include WebRTC enablement, with which inbound and outbound calls are routed directly into a Web browser. LiveOps' WebRTC allows a browser to become a comprehensive agent desktop including a phone, without the need for plug-ins or telephony infrastructure. According to LiveOps, this functionality can reduce the total cost of ownership by as much as 50% and also improves agent productivity and workforce utilization. Last, the PaaS offering is aimed at developers and systems integrators that seek to use the core LiveOps functionality but create a customized solution for their contact center.

Below are some of the highlights of LiveOps' cloud contact center capabilities:

allowing for agents to respond to customer inquiries without having to switch applications. This single-screen integration enables agents to receive a holistic view of the customer, including a history of past interactions. For agents who need a CRM application to facilitate screen pops of customer information on incoming contacts, LiveOps has "CRM Lite" built in and included with the desktop. The channels used in LiveOps Engage are dictated by which channel customers want to "turn on." For example, some customers start by just using the voice channel, then add email and chat, and eventually add social. Because the platform is cloud based, channels can be easily added or removed, and the customers are paying for what they use. In February 2015, LiveOps was awarded a patent for multichannel pivoting a customer among synchronous and asynchronous communication channels. The patent covers a computer-implemented method for determining the need to direct a customer from one

communication channel to another, as well as determine the best channel to pivot to, based on information the customer has provided.

 CRM integrations. LiveOps' platform integrates with Salesforce.com's Sales Cloud or Service Cloud as well as with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Unified Service Desk (announced spring 2014). Both of these integrations allow for full functionality of the platform, where all of the basic multichannel features described in the bullet point above are embedded within the CRM application, including WebRTC enablement. In October 2014, LiveOps announced CX Advantage, which is an add-on to the Salesforce.com integration and has the ability to detect whether a customer journey is headed in a positive or negative direction. It then initiates an engagement with the customer to give the user an opportunity to create a positive outcome for the customer and the brand.

 Screen sharing — LiveOps Visual and Visual Advantage. In October 2014, LiveOps announced the availability of LiveOps Visual and LiveOps Visual Advantage, which enable a co-browsing and screen-sharing capability powered by Glance Networks, on the Salesforce.com

AppExchange. LiveOps Visual is the standalone version of the solution, whereas Visual Advantage is integrated with the Salesforce desktop. These capabilities allow sales and service agents to see and take control of what the customers are experiencing on their own browser and also include data capture capabilities that are automatically stored and sent to Salesforce.com so that supervisors can coach agents and customer interactions can be analyzed. Use cases for these capabilities include product demonstrations, co-shopping experiences, and real-time assistance to complete transactions.

 LiveOps Insight. LiveOps Insight is a suite of reporting and analytics tools. LiveOps Insight capabilities range from identifying broad trends across all contact centers to performing granular analysis of individual agent performance. Flexible ad hoc reporting allows LiveOps' customers to manage and customize their own performance data without requiring IT support; clients have the power to select metrics, define dimensions, and set thresholds/visual alerts themselves with these reporting tools. LiveOps Insight offers "live dashboard" views that monitor real-time agent performance and display up-to-date industry-standard KPIs, including intraday metrics — by time period, by session, or by agent. In addition, a silent monitor tool allows supervisors to listen in and provide immediate feedback to agents from anywhere in the world.

Company Strategy

LiveOps made some significant strategic moves in 2014. The company announced that it had raised $30 million in debt funding in early 2014 and, as mentioned previously, announced a restructuring of the company to form two separate corporate entities — splitting up the cloud contact center and agent-based services. LiveOps also acquired a company called UserEvents that enables real-time contextual routing. The acquisition of UserEvents enhanced LiveOps' existing multichannel routing capability, and several other announcements, including Visual Advantage and the partnership with Microsoft

Dynamics CRM, solidified LiveOps position on customer experience.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

Hosted and cloud delivery options are becoming ever more appealing to contact center buyers due to the cost efficiency and flexibility afforded by these delivery models. In addition, the future of contact center services will be significantly impacted by the trend driven by consumer needs and expectations; the need for contextual awareness, a breadth of communication options including mobile and social channels, and the potential for understanding customers better by having a holistic view are great opportunities in the cloud contact center market.

ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE

Advice for LiveOps

 Continue the focus on customer experience. The customer experience focus among buyers of contact center services is currently driving a lot of investment. Making things simpler and more flexible for customers and agents alike is important to companies that value customer

experience. LiveOps has positioned its marketing messages well in relation to this trend, and its multichannel and employee experience capabilities back the company up. That LiveOps continues to develop and enhance its complementary partnership with Salesforce.com and has now become exclusive with Microsoft Dynamic CRM demonstrates its focus on making things easier for users. Partnering with some of the leading cloud CRM providers adds to the usability and adoptability of the LiveOps platform. LiveOps should continue to pay attention to the leaders in the CRM world and align itself accordingly.

 Leverage authority from the BPO business. LiveOps is one of the few cloud contact center providers that has a legacy of also providing BPO services. Although the agent services business isn't the centerpiece of the LiveOps strategy while the company focuses on the platform, the agent business is growing at a faster pace than the industry average for contact center BPO services. Through this agent network, LiveOps has the perception of being a provider that really "gets" business process and the importance of outcomes. LiveOps also hasn't stopped innovating for its agent business, announcing LiveOps University 2.0, a social learning ecosystem for its agents, in late 2014. The agent business also provides a very strategic competitive advantage in that it is complementary to LiveOps' portfolio. As buyer demand for BPaaS models increases, LiveOps has a unique opportunity to be a leader in this space. Not only does the platform business gain insight and expertise from its in-house users, but the focus that LiveOps places on positive agent experiences translates directly to positive customer experiences. That focus on employee experience can be an important differentiator for LiveOps.

browser increases the simplicity of the setup and has the potential to significantly enhance the flexibility of adding or detracting users to the platform. The current drawback to WebRTC is the lack of universality, with Internet Explorer and Safari not supporting WebRTC, but in the long term that concern will likely diminish. In the meantime, the usability of WebRTC is dependent upon the consumer's choice of Web browser. LiveOps should use its position as an early mover for WebRTC to sculpt the way this capability plays out in the contact center marketplace.

 Enable users to move up the value chain. WebRTC and the screen sharing capability are also very important to the shift in the types of interactions that are occurring in the contact center today. As the simpler and more transactional interactions get replaced by automation and self-service, the average agent-assisted interaction becomes more complex, leading to a need for higher levels of skills and training for agents on average. This begs the question of what further value can be leveraged with these highly skilled agents, whether it be for sales, higher-level tech support, or marketing, all of which could be assisted by the ability to have a video chat and/or screen sharing. Thus, WebRTC and Visual Advantage have the capability to enable the higher-value transactions that will become more prevalent in the future and enable more revenue-generating opportunities for companies. LiveOps is clearly focused on

multichannel communications as well as customer and employee experience, all of which are incredibly important; it is clear from LiveOps' recent growth that this focus is working well. The key for LiveOps will be to continue to stay on top of ever-changing consumer preferences and communication trends and using these elements to grow the business.

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Related Research

 Hosted Contact Center Services Profile: West Corp. (IDC #254314, March 2015)

 2014 U.S. Consumer Communication Preferences Study Results (IDC #253705, January 2015)

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