LiveOps: From Next Available Agent to Best Available Agent

I was chatting with my good friend Bill Trenchard this morning. Bill was one of the founders of LiveOps and is currently the Chairman of the company. He and I were talking about my LiveOps post from last night and I realized that while I had talked about some great applications of the LiveOps platform, I didn't discuss the thing I found most interesting about LiveOps technology. So before I move on to another one of my portfolio companies, let me share one additional thought about LiveOps.

I am a huge believer in the value of using software and data to optimize transactions. And the more data and the better the software, the more value you can extract from each transaction. In many ways, that is precisely what each one of my portfolio companies is trying to do -- unleash the power of the underlying data to produce the most value. LiveOps is no different. By leveraging the IP underpinnings of its call center platform, LiveOps is able to optimize the experience for its customers in ways that give the company an unfair advantage over traditional call centers and traditional call center management software.

The key to the LiveOps platform is that it tracks and manages each individual answering phones as an autonomous agent. And each agent is characterized by a set of data that makes up that agent's profile. So imagine that my mom decides to make some extra money by becoming a LiveOps agent. When she first starts to answer calls, the system will have very little information about her. But over time it will gather data about the job she is doing. The LiveOps platform will learn things like how quickly she answers a ringing phone, how many minutes is her average phone call, how satisfied are the callers with the outcomes from her calls, how many of her calls result in sales, what is the average amount of money spent on a call she takes, how often does she manage to up-sell the caller, etc. Using all of this data, when a call comes in, the LiveOps platform is able to rout the call, not to the next available operator, but rather to the best available operator. And that is LiveOps' unfair advantage.

LiveOps is in essence AdWords for people. The platform is able to measure and manage each individual agent in real time and route calls based upon the performance of each agent. And that routing doesn't simply rely upon data about the agent. It also relies upon information about the call coming in. If a call to the LiveOps' service is to sell a Ginsu Knife, the agent with the best track record of selling and up-selling will get the call. If, on the other hand, it is a call concerning front line product support, a different agent may have the best record of quick and effective resolution of support matters. Yet another call may come in that is a simple pizza order and get routed to the agent who is the most efficient and most accurate order taker. LiveOps software is designed to manage a large pool of agents and optimize their performance in real time based upon the nature of the call and the characteristics of the available agents. As a result, not only is LiveOps able to provide the low cost solution (by allowing agents to work from home throughout the country), but it is also able to provide the most effective solution by routing calls based upon the specific performance metrics defined by the client.

It is this real time, performance-based call routing that I think has led to LiveOps massive success to date. LiveOps customers include large enterprises that want to use the LiveOps platform to manage their own call centers and their own agents, as well as companies that want to leverage LiveOps' agents and software to provide an end to end solution. Either way, LiveOps customers are guaranteed the most efficient and effective "call center" experience possible. And, to my mind, that's pretty exciting stuff.

Comments

[randy]

Heck, sir... not only dead-on as usual, but provokes the thought about derived data from these services as the bigger win. Not just IRI/Neilsen-like, but think of the value locked up in the demand-management and optimization systems extant... from Sabre to Wesabe to Liveops. Just staggering.

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