Meaningful customer connections. Online. Real time.

CASE STUDY

PlumberSurplus.com drives sales with LivePerson Contact Center

Specialty retailer increases average order value 15% using live chat.

Founded in 2004, PlumberSurplus.com is a leading Internet retailer specializing in home improvement, plumbing and building products ranging from faucets and bath tubs to sump pumps and access doors.

The company sought a contact center solution that provided:

  • Live online chat functionality
  • Back-end customer email management to replace Microsoft Outlook
  • A recognizable brand name that inspires customer confidence
  • A scalable solution

LivePerson Solution

PlumberSurplus.com implemented LivePerson Contact Center to manage customer communication across all channels - chat, email, voice, and knowledgebase in real time.

The comprehensive solution allows the company to offer instant answers to online visitors via chat, reducing response time from one business day to 30 seconds or less.

In April 2007 the company added chat to every page of PlumberSurplus.com and leveraged LivePerson Contact Center to:

  • Interact with website visitors in real time. Real-time visitor monitoring and co-browsing enabled reps to deliver efficient and accurate service to customers at any stage of the buying cycle. Reps fielded over 100 chats per day with very high conversion rates.
  • Increase online sales. Reps leverage the chat channel to promote product cross-sells and upsells, as well as to prevent abandonment when a customer encounters difficulties checking out. Customers can bypass the standard shopping cart process by giving reps their order details and credit card information during chat interactions. In response to the increased number of purchases completed via chat, PlumberSurplus.com tested out LivePerson's HACKER SAFE branding options. Displaying the certification mark on dialogue windows helped triple the number of customers completing transactions using live chat.
  • Improve responsiveness to email inquiries. To better manage its large volume of incoming emails, PlumberSurplus.com fully replaced Outlook with the email management system offered in LivePerson Contact Center. Ticketing, skills-based routing, concurrent logins, canned responses, and seamless escalation between channels allowed reps to respond to customers more quickly and efficiently.

Results

PlumberSurplus.com has leveraged LivePerson Contact Center to achieve significant improvements in customer service, agent efficiency and sales volume.

  • Customers are very satisfied with the chat experience. 95% of post-chat survey respondents rate chat as "excellent" and 60% say chat helped them decide to purchase. Customers have also benefited from the addition of a Frequently Asked Questions section, which was augmented primarily from LivePerson Contact Center's analytics, survey responses and chat transcripts.
  • PlumberSurplus.com reps prefer the chat channel. Chat is easy to use, and canned answers save reps time and ensures proper responses. Reps are more efficient because they can assist multiple customers concurrently via chat.
  • Over 15% increase in average order value. The company has increased average order values by more than 15% and realized cost savings by deflecting phone calls to the more cost-effective chat channel. Based on its success with LivePerson Contact Center, PlumberSurplus.com is planning to add LiveCall click-to-talk technology to its site in the near future.