Augment, a leader in customer experience-driven artificial intelligence, announced a collaboration with LivePerson, a leading provider of cloud-based mobile and online business messaging solutions, to build upon the company’s LiveEngage platform. The partnership is focused on helping companies maximize support teams’ performance by using AI algorithms, which lowers company costs through increased agent efficiencies and reduced training times.
Augment aligned its technologies and business model to address the rise of text-based customer service market trends. Per Business Insider, text message and IM has already surpassed both social network and email in terms of monthly usage. Millennial consumers, those between 18 and 34 years of age, view messaging as their preferred communications channel because it’s convenient and provides a more rapid resolution to their problems.
These trends are an important part of winning the bigger battle for customer experience. Per Gartner, 89 percent of companies believe that customer experience will be their primary basis for competition by 2016 versus 26 percent four years ago. Further, per Deloitte, 82 percent of consumers view customer experience as a competitive differentiator, and view the accuracy and quality of information provided (82 percent), as well as ease of interaction (73 percent), as the most important attributes of a quality customer experience. In support of these trends, customer experience-driven AI is a critical part of the empowerment necessary for brand representatives to better service and satisfy customers.
“Under this partnership, Augment’s product suite seamlessly integrates with LivePerson’s LiveEngage console. Configuration takes a matter of minutes,” said Matt Swanson, CEO of Augment. “Brands increasingly face the challenge of providing flawless and timely customer experiences across all of their channels. Additionally, consumer demand for customer support services is at an all-time high. By assisting human agents with AI, we can help our brand partners drive notable efficiency gains.”
“Augment’s approach of pairing humans with AI aligns with our vision for how consumers and brands will communicate in a messaging-first world,” said Chris Vennard, Head of Strategic and Technology Partnerships at LivePerson. “We have opened up our LiveEngage platform so that Augment offerings like Product Helper and Chat Helper can help our clients continue to manage the increasing volume of text based customer demands.”
Today’s agreement builds upon Augment’s growing network of customers, which already includes Dyson and a variety of Fortune 500 brands operating through business process outsourcing and contact center solutions providers, such as Knoah Solutions.
“Knoah was looking for an AI technology provider we could partner with to assist us with our goal of improving our digital engagement strategy. Augment was the perfect choice for us,” said David Lewy, SVP of Sales and Accounts at Knoah Solutions — a joint customer of LivePerson and Augment. “They have exciting technology that has allowed us to create Chat Helper, which provides our agents with real time assistance on every incoming chat that we receive. Our initial results are positive, and we are expanding the program as we see value in increased agent productivity, accuracy and consistency.”