LiveOps Raises $30M, Buys Customer Service Startup
LiveOps, a provider of cloud contact center and customer service software, has closed a $30 million round of debt funding from Comerica Bank, the single largest round of funding in its history. In conjunction with this financing, LiveOps announced the formation of two separate corporate entities to focus on LiveOps’ growth in cloud contact center software and on-demand agent services. The two businesses, called LiveOps Cloud Platform and LiveOps Agent Services, will be run as wholly owned subsidiaries of LiveOps, with LiveOps CEO Marty Beard assuming the chairman of the board position.
According to Beard, LiveOps has experienced a 55 percent average growth rate in platform revenue over the past few years, as well as a 240 percent growth in bookings and a 112 percent growth in new customer acquisitions over the last year. The company also has grown its number of channel partners and expanded its market presence to the UK, Australia and the rest of Asia.
“This new round of funding will be used to accelerate our growth worldwide and capture even more market share in the rapidly changing customer service arena. We believe that we have the right technology and sales momentum needed to become the global leader in cloud customer service,” Beard said in a statement.
Acquisition Adds Customer Experience Capabilities
As one of its first new investments, LiveOps has acquired Canadian startup UserEvents and its flagship product CxEngage, a contextual routing engine that can aggregate and process events on any social, Web, mobile or voice channel in real time. According to the company, the addition of contextual routing provides real-time insights into each customer’s buying and service intentions, while smart routing techniques guide cross-channel interactions that help both brands and consumers reach their desired outcome.
“It is no longer enough to measure customer satisfaction for each channel separately. Consumers shift between channels and contact centers must adapt to better manage these fragmented interactions across voice, email, chat, social and SMS,” Beard said. “By incorporating real-time, contextual routing and proactive customer engagement into the LiveOps platform we will provide a better experience across the entire customer journey.”
CxEngage makes customer data actionable by picking up on patterns in behaviors, placing them in the context of the customer’s interactions and suggesting ways in which brands can delight customers. This includes the detection of patterns indicative of a positive or negative customer experience via in-memory processing. Among other benefits, LiveOps says the technology will increase first contact resolution, a key customer service metric.
LiveOps will integrate the CxEngage contextual routing capabilities into its platform and extend them to all LiveOps applications, including LiveOps Engage, LiveOps for Salesforce and custom applications built on top of LiveOps APIs.
The UserEvents staff will join LiveOps immediately, with the former UserEvents New Brunswick, Canada office now serving as an additional LiveOps R&D facility designated for Big Data-driven technologies.
LiveOps Cloud Platform provides contact center applications that enable organizations to manage multichannel customer interactions across voice, email, chat, social media and SMS.
LiveOps has more than 300 global customers, including Salesforce.com, Symantec, Royal Mail Group, Ideal Living, and Amway New Zealand. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., with European regional headquarters in London, LiveOps supports a range of industries including retail, financial, health care, insurance and high tech.
In addition, LiveOps Agent Services provides on-demand outsourced customer service through a network of 20,000 independent, work-at-home contact center agents. It handles more than 70 million interactions a year on behalf of more than 250 clients. In 2013, it saw a 75 percent growth in insurance customer service interactions and a 67 percent increase in health and human services revenue, and it provided agent services to 70 percent of the top marketing retailers in the U.S.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
