NEW YORK, May 31, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- LivePerson, Inc. (Nasdaq: LPSN), a leading provider of conversational commerce solutions, today announced the launch of LiveEngage for Voice Assistants, the most advanced way for brands to connect conversationally, at scale, with consumers using Amazon® Alexa™ or Google® Assistant. As well as performing simple tasks like paying a phone bill or checking an account balance, it is the first conversational platform for the enterprise to deliver two key innovations for consumers:

• The ability to easily switch device or location, by handing off conversations from voice assistants to messaging on a smartphone, taking that same thread "on the go" without losing the flow or context.
• Access to both bots and human staff in one thread, so any questions too complicated for a bot can be escalated to a human customer service agent, without the frustrating "dead end" effect often found with bots in the past.

By allowing handoffs to other devices and combining bots and human staff, LiveEngage for Voice Assistants is far more powerful than earlier solutions, because it puts in-home assistants to work for consumers as part of a wider, continuous connection to the brands they use, from any location, and on the consumer's preferred schedule. For example, voice assistant owners can start a conversation hands-free in the kitchen, then move it to their smartphone as they leave the kitchen or house, to continue when it's more convenient.

"As brands adopt conversational commerce, they need to offer consumers a continuous connection across all the most important conversational channels, and LivePerson is the first company to deliver it. With LiveEngage for Voice Assistants, brands can weave Alexa and Google Assistant into this wider continuous connection, and empower consumers with the ability to get any answer they need, at any time, and from any device," says Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson. "With this release, LivePerson is pointing the way to a conversational future that is far better for consumers than today's fragmented mix of phone calls, websites and siloed social touchpoints. We're very excited about it."

Alex Spinelli, global CTO of LivePerson, says, "Alexa and other voice assistants are among the most beloved consumer technologies and increasingly a part of people's everyday lives — in the kitchen, the living room, and beyond. What we have delivered with LiveEngage for Voice Assistants is a way to make them even more valuable and seamlessly integrate them with other ways to message with brands, putting the consumer in control and giving them a great experience."

As well as the new innovations for smartphone handoff and a seamless "tango" between bots and human staff, the system includes the other capabilities which have made LiveEngage the world's leading conversational commerce platform, including: real-time metrics for customer sentiment, satisfaction, and usage; a "write once, run many" bot deployment framework to build one bot and run it across multiple messaging endpoints, such as in-app messaging, SMS, web messaging, Facebook Messenger, LINE, and, now, voice assistants; and a closed-loop optimization process, with a suite of tools to improve bot performance over time.

LiveEngage for Voice Assistants also goes far beyond legacy live chat platforms by allowing multiple bots — including those from multiple vendors — to run alongside each other, with rich metrics on every detail of the conversation. These capabilities, plus the industry's most advanced suite of management tools, allow brands to deliver the most sophisticated voice assistant services.

LiveEngage for Voice Assistants, including Alexa and Google Home integration, is available now for enterprise customers of LivePerson.

About LivePerson
LivePerson makes life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands. Our 18,000 customers, including leading brands like Citibank, HSBC, Orange, and The Home Depot, use our conversational commerce solutions to orchestrate humans and AI, at scale, and create a convenient, deeply personal relationship — a conversational relationship — with their millions of consumers. For more information about LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN), please visit www.liveperson.com.

Contact:
Allison Franzese
afranzese@liveperson.com 
212.609.4224

SOURCE LivePerson, Inc.