Customer expectations have greatly shifted in recent years, especially as we\u2019ve moved into \u201cthe age of the customer<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a time when brands are expected to anticipate and meet customer needs. And artificial intelligence is a critical tool in achieving those goals.<\/p>\n According to a recent LivePerson survey<\/a>, 83% of customers prefer brands that let them use messaging conversations to digitally browse, interact, and make purchases. Conversational channels such as text messaging, WhatsApp, iMessage, and others are growing in popularity, with 63% of consumers saying that messaging with a brand makes them feel a deeper personal connection.<\/p>\n Brands have expanded their online shopping and digital channel options, but continue to face challenges with creating more personalized customer service with customer-agent interactions.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why LivePerson and Afiniti have today announced a new strategic partnership<\/a> to bring AI-powered personalization efforts, featuring customer-agent pairing, to consumers\u2019 digital channels, all through LivePerson\u2019s industry-leading Conversational Cloud\u2122<\/a> platform.<\/p>\n This partnership will build better customer-brand engagement by using AI to pair customers and contact center agents based on best fit. Afiniti\u2019s AI pairing technology<\/a> will be natively integrated with LivePerson\u2019s Conversational Cloud, streamlining deployment, driving revenue for clients, and bringing a more personalized customer experience to millions of people to improve customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.<\/p>\n Ben Evans, Afiniti\u2019s Executive Vice President of Partnerships, and Dan Sincavage, LivePerson\u2019s Senior Vice President of Voice & Global Partnerships, discuss the partnership below.<\/p>\n In your own words, why did Afiniti and LivePerson decide to partner?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ben:<\/strong> This partnership combines Afiniti and LivePerson\u2019s powerful AI capabilities through a native integration, helping companies improve the agent and customer experience, while driving more revenue.<\/p>\n Not only do we share the goal of helping businesses have better conversations with their customers, but LivePerson\u2019s powerful messaging platform, innovative culture, and drive to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage for its clients have made them an excellent partner for Afiniti.<\/p>\n By partnering with LivePerson, a leader in customer engagement solutions, Afiniti is also able to extend our proven AI pairing technology beyond voice and into messaging on multiple channels.<\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong> At LivePerson, we\u2019re all about creating customer engagement that feels Curiously Human\u2122. That is to say, a customized experience where AI understands customer behavior and intent, connects them to brands across conversational channels, and delivers meaningful outcomes. Afiniti\u2019s goal of pairing people based on individual behavior and interpersonal connection aligns seamlessly with this mission.<\/p>\n By natively integrating Afiniti\u2019s behavioral pairing technology, our platform will help brands deliver even more personalized customer service, delight their customers, drive revenue, and cut costs. The partnership will allow us to create better customer engagement for more brands and their customers across the globe.<\/p>\n You both used the term native integration; tell us more about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Ben:<\/strong> At the point in the customer journey a live agent is required, LivePerson\u2019s Conversational Cloud communicates with Afiniti\u2019s pairing solution to determine agent selection. Afiniti\u2019s AI analyzes historical data to identify subtle customer and agent behavioral patterns. By combining this information with real-time agent availability and utilization, the customer is paired with the best agent in milliseconds, resulting in higher customer satisfaction, happier agents, and better commercial outcomes for the brand.<\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong> The integration will be seamless in both synchronous and asynchronous messaging<\/a> channels, plus offer self-serve audit capabilities to monitor operations for reliability and stability. In short, by integrating directly into our platform, Afiniti brings 16 years of expertise in pairing customers and agents to all of the conversational channels supported by our solution<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our Conversational Cloud powers nearly a billion conversational interactions per month. Afiniti\u2019s pairing technology is helping us set our sights on even better outcomes for the customers and agents that participate in these conversations on a massive scale.<\/p>\n Dan, what are the specific benefits for joint clients and consumers?<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong> This strategic partnership will help customers have better conversations with brands on the channels they love using everyday with friends and family. Simply put: they will be more satisfied, and will feel more individually catered to by the brands they are engaging with.<\/p>\n Our joint clients will also unlock even more value from their LivePerson solution, with more tools for their personalization strategy, an array of self-service portals and monitoring options, and seamless deployment, enabled by our close partnership and strong integration. They will be able to optimize any metric prioritized by their business strategy across sales, service, and retention.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Afiniti\u2019s continuous ON\/OFF benchmarking will ensure precise measurement of the value delivered through pairings, while the native integration will provide a seamless and fast setup. Plus, a pay-for-performance model means clients will be charged only a share of the value that LivePerson and Afiniti deliver together.<\/p>\n Lastly, what does the timeline look like for the deployment of this partnership for a customized experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ben:<\/strong> This announcement is the first step in a multi-year relationship. We are currently targeting GA in early 2023, with a strong pipeline of early access clients in development.<\/p>\n Both LivePerson and Afiniti will work closely with clients from discovery to implementation. Clients can expect the deployment process to take about 16 weeks, and once deployed, we\u2019ll provide ongoing, global post-launch support.<\/p>\n If you are an existing Afiniti or LivePerson client and interested in becoming an early access customer for this integration, please reach out to your current relationship manager.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LivePerson\u2019s Conversational Cloud and Afiniti’s pairing technology enable an AI-powered personalized experience throughout the customer journey Customer expectations have greatly shifted in recent years, especially as we\u2019ve moved into \u201cthe age of the customer\u201d \u2013 a time when brands are expected to anticipate and meet customer needs. And artificial intelligence is a critical tool in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":13145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-5752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partnerships","tag-latest-thinking"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6207,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5752\/revisions\/6207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/13145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.afiniti.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}