LivePerson puts more personality (and AI) into next-gen bots

Now that smartypants-type messaging bots are becoming more pervasive, what they need now is to become a bit softer and more human-like, so we can like them a bit more. After all, bots are fast becoming de facto work assistants for us, and we always want to work with people – and bots – we like.

LivePerson wants to do exactly that: make bots a lot more like humans and less like soulless droids. 

The New York City-based company today revealed several new AI capabilities and integrations to help its clients offer what it calls “curiously human” digital experiences to their customers. These are bots that understand, connect, and deliver results for consumers when they’re searching for products. One of those capabilities is that these new bots now have a faster understanding of what the consumer seeks and actually know when to hand off the conversation to another bot — or a human, if necessary — with the special insight needed to solve the issue quickly, before the consumer decides to give up and go somewhere else. Transactions sometimes amount to a minute or less, so speed is of the essence.

Using its bank of about 1 billion conversational interactions per month stored in the company’s Conversational Cloud, LivePerson claims its AI is better-trained to interpret and simplify complex customer inquiries to automate meaningful conversations and carry them through to a sale.

“Conversations drive commerce; in fact, 77% of consumers say having the option to message makes them more likely to make a purchase,” LivePerson founder and CEO Rob LoCascio said in a media advisory. 

Advanced cognitive capability

The new capabilities announced today — including advanced routing and self-learning technology, integrations with thousands of apps brands and consumers use every day, and better ways to track and deliver conversational commerce (which is part of LivePerson’s secret sauce) — help the company take a giant leap forward toward making digital experiences feel “curiously human,” LoCascio said.

LivePerson has pushed the limits of human and computer connection through AI, LoCascio said. In recent years, the company developed its bot-building platform, Conversation Builder, that gave non-technical workers in the contact center a no-to-low code interface to create, improve, and supervise conversational AI experiences. The company also introduced more effective ways to measure how brands are meeting their goals for conversational experiences, LoCascio said. 

For example, in 2021, LivePerson introduced capabilities that deeply understand and measure how humans feel about the conversation they had with a bot, translating the results into actionable improvements brands can make to their digital experience. Contact center agents were also empowered to train AI models that enable better conversations, the company said.

LivePerson counts among its 18,000-plus customers a diverse set of companies that include Citibank, Dunkin’ Donuts, HSBC, Delta Airlines, Vodefone, The Home Depot, and David’s Bridal. The company competes in a crowded market with Genesys, Zendesk, IBM, Oracle, DataChat, NiceCXOne, SnapEngage, PolyAI, Replicant and others.

“We’re creating these experiences that feel very human and in doing that, it allows the brands to really understand their consumers,” new CMO Amber Armstrong, who came from IBM, told VentureBeat. “It allows them to build better connections with those consumers and allows them to also drive better outcomes so they reduce cost and create greater loyalty.”

How the AI is being deployed

LivePerson’s new AI-powered dynamic routing and actions capabilities understand a consumer’s intent and sentiment, using this insight to automatically route conversations to the best-qualified bot or agent, Chief Scientist Joe Bradley told VentureBeat.

Dynamic routing can now be deployed quickly and easily, with a no-to-low code interface making it easy to drag-and-drop bots and policies directly into conversational flows. This marks a major departure from traditional rules-based routing decisions that are hard-coded into systems with professional services. Dynamic routing can also be customized based on parameters, such as day of the week, sales campaigns, supply chain issues, and others. 

For example, a brand can create a policy based on shopping cart value to automatically prioritize and direct a high-value consumer to the best agent to increase the likelihood of conversion and maximize sales.

LivePerson’s dynamic actions capability monitors signals in real-time and triggers routing without relying on human intervention, Bradley said. For example, if a flight is canceled, an airline using dynamic actions can automatically send an alert to affected travelers and seamlessly connect them to an agent or AI designated to handle rebooking. Dynamic routing is now generally available and dynamic actions are coming soon.

LivePerson’s Conversational AI can also now use real-time signals like intents, conversation quality, and sentiment scores to learn and improve on its own, deploying self-healing strategies to understand users better, reset conversations to a known good state, and delegate to other capable bots and humans, Bradley said. 

The company is also introducing new automations that can handle interruptions to help conversations feel more natural. Instead of being confused when a human sends multiple messages in quick succession, these automations identify the single most important customer intent and focus the conversation on resolving it. 

In addition, new automations handling “small talk” — the greetings, pleasantries, and even profanities that a consumer shares during a conversation — will begin rolling out next month, the company said.