2014

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Home Properties Inc.Potential Renters Buy Into Digital Engagement

1© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.

Responsible for supporting sales and resident service requests for more than 100 apartment communities across the Eastern United States, Home Properties’ Contact Center deployed a live chat

solution from LivePerson to provide another channel for digital engagement with residents and prospects. After four

years, the volume of chat conversations has grown threefold and the number of apartment tour appointments set

via the channel has increased by 460 percent.

Searching for an apartment can be a frustrating experience. In many

cases, prospective residents must search multiple websites, and

it is often difficult to determine whether a property has the precise

features one is looking for. Fortunately, people can search multiple

properties at once through the Home Properties Inc. website.

The company owns more than 40,000 housing units in nearly

120 apartment communities in markets in the eastern United States.

There is another benefit to working with Home Properties: while

apartment managers can be difficult to reach by phone due to their

busy schedules, incoming calls to Home Properties communities are

automatically routed to the company’s contact center in Rochester,

New York if the local community teams are not able to answer. “The

21 agents on my team are equipped to answer almost any question

about any property,” explains John Ridge, Contact Center Director

for Home Properties. “We can make appointments for prospects to

tour apartments, and arrange service requests for current residents.

For some of our larger communities, we are the primary point of

contact for service requests, so that local staff can focus on resident

relations and sales efforts.”

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Home Properties Inc.

Getting Live Chat RightIn 2006, the Home Properties Contact Center added live chat as a new engagement channel alongside its existing phone and email services.

“We wanted to make it as easy as possible for anyone looking to contact us either because they’re already a customer, or because they want to

be a customer,” Ridge asserts. Unfortunately, the team was disappointed with the company’s first live chat solution. “The system was down a lot,

and when we would call the supplier, their team wasn’t very professional,” Ridge recalls.

2© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Home Properties Inc.

Home Properties Inc.Went Public: 1994

Industry: Real Estate

Headquarters: Rochester, New York

Housing Units: 40,000+ housing units in almost 120 apartment communities

Geographies Served: Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Greater New York; Boston; Chicago; Florida

The Challenge• Provide an additional

engagement channel for sales and service

• Deploy a reliable live chat solution with professional support

The SolutionEngagement Model: Proactive and static live chat for sales and services

Under the Hood: LivePerson platform with rules-based targeting

Customer Success: Regular review of best practices

The Results• 300%+ increase in live chat

conversations, from 6,700 in 2010 to 22,921 in 2013

• 460% increase in appointments set by live chat, from 112 in 2010 to 628 in 2013

• Improvement in the number of inquiries per staff hour and a reduced cost per contact

Ridge researched other solutions and settled on LivePerson because of its reputation as a world leader

in digital engagement. The team deployed the new solution in July 2009 with four concurrent licenses.

The program has grown steadily since then: the company now owns seven licenses and conducted nearly

23,000 chat conversations in 2013. A Click-to-Chat button is available to both prospects and current

residents, but 80 percent of chat conversations are sales inquiries from prospective residents.

Home Properties uses rules-based targeting through the LivePerson platform to identify high-value

prospects who display certain behaviors on the website, such as conducting multiple searches

or remaining on a community page for a long time. These customers receive proactive live chat

invitations, and the resulting conversations account for about 13 percent of all live chats conducted

by Ridge’s team.

Ridge quickly learned that good telephone agents are not always the most appropriate for engaging

with customer via live chat. “As a smaller contact center, our team members have to multitask,” Ridge

notes. “But every agent has a certain skill set, and some just don’t have the keyboarding, grammar,

and spelling skills to do well in a fast-paced live chat conversation.” From the beginning, Ridge set

expectations that not all phone agents would be approved to conduct live chat conversations. Today,

agents staffing live chat lines tend to be more tenured, and being approved for live chat is seen as career

advancement by many employees.

Explosive GrowthRidge’s team has gracefully managed rapid growth in digital engagement over the past several years.

“We had just over 6,700 live chat conversations in 2010, and nearly 23,000 in 2013,” Ridge reports.

“Phone volume has not decreased, meaning that many of the live chat conversations are with people

who would not pick up the phone to ask for information. We see that as a good thing.” Live chat is one

factor in an improvement in the number of inquiries per staff hour and a reduced cost per contact over

the past several years.

The main sales metric that Ridge’s team tracks is the number of appointments set for prospective

residents to tour apartments. “Appointments set by live chat have increased from 112 in 2010 to

628 in 2013.” And while the team has not conducted customer satisfaction surveys, Ridge’s anecdotal

experience is that customers love the ability to communicate via live chat. “Visitors love the ability to

have questions answered quickly, without having to leave the keyboard.”

“”

Visitors love the ability to have questions answered quickly, without having to leave the keyboard.

– John Ridge, Contact Center Director, Home Properties Inc.

© 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 3

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Home Properties Inc.

A member of LivePerson’s Customer Success team is assigned to the Home Properties account and checks in with Ridge periodically to

explore how the team can optimize its digital engagement infrastructure. “It’s always good to hear from him, but LivePerson platform is

so effective and easy to use that I haven’t had to reach out to him except to increase our usage,” he says. “Everyone I have dealt with at

LivePerson is very professional, and the product has really performed for us.”

“

”

Many of the live chat conversations are with people who would not pick up the phone to ask for information.

We see that as a good thing.– John Ridge, Contact Center Director,

Home Properties Inc.

About LivePersonLivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) offers a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to proactively connect in real-time with their customers via chat, voice, and content delivery at the right time, through the right channel, including websites, social media, and mobile devices. This “intelligent engagement” is driven by real-time behavioral analytics, producing connections based on a true understanding of business objectives and customer needs. LivePerson is headquartered in New York City with offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, and Melbourne.

ContactLivePerson, Inc. T: 212.991.1794 475 Tenth Ave F: 212.609.4233 5th Floor info@liveperson.com New York, NY 10018 www.liveperson.com