2014

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Sun Life Direct Partners with LivePerson to Assure Online Customer Satisfaction

2014 LivePerson, Inc.© 1

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Sun Life Direct

Company ProfileSun Life Direct is a familiar brand in the UK life assurance sector, trading for over 200 years even once turning down a certain Charles Dickens

as he was considered too risky! Now part of the AXA Group, Sun Life Direct is well known for its TV and press advertising, featuring Michael

Parkinson, and for satisfying needs via a direct one-to-one relationship with its customers who are predominantly aged 50+.

Sun Life Direct realised that it needed to offer an online service to its customers, comparable to its offline one, and maintaining high customer service standards was key to this. During a pilot, multiple improvements were made to the online customer experience, with high CSAT scores achieved

and conversion rates increased. LiveEngage also proved popular with the call centre team. As a result of a successful

pilot and having attended LivePerson’s Aspire conference, the Sun Life Direct team identified LiveEngage, LivePerson’s

digital engagement platform, as a potential solution to a number of business challenges that it faced.

Challenge The increasing amount of time consumers now spend online,

particularly when it comes to researching and purchasing products,

caused Sun Life Direct to revisit their digital marketing strategy.

Sun Life Direct’s customers traditionally applied via telephone

or paper from traditional direct marketing advertising. Sun Life

Direct wanted to offer customers the same service online, without

importantly losing any of the quality of customer service it is

famous for.

Sun Life Direct also wanted to set up a digital platform that would

facilitate the marketing of new products to customers with a different

demographic profile.

Its existing target customers are typically late-adopters of digital

technology and sometimes need help in making the switch to

online applications.

For reasons of cost, expertise and efficiency, online customer service

would need to be handled by Sun Life Direct’s existing customer

telephone enquiry service, operated by 2Touch, based in Sunderland.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Sun Life Direct

SolutionSun Life Direct’s Head of Digital, Colin McDougall attended

LivePerson’s Aspire conference in June 2013, where presentations

by their customers RBS and O2, amongst others, convinced him of

the value and potential of the LivePerson LiveEngage solution.

Sun Life Direct deployed Live Chat initially to help increase the

conversion rate of applications online.

LivePerson’s intelligent engagement capability enabled Sun Life Direct

to offer Live Chat at exactly the point in the customer journey where

help is needed.

A team was set up at the 2Touch call centre offering Live Chat

from 8am to 6pm, running in parallel with their established

telephone operation.

22014 LivePerson, Inc.©

2013 LivePerson, Inc.© 3

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Sun Life Direct

ContactLivePerson (UK) Ltd.

250 South Oak Way

Green Park, Reading

RG2 6UG, UK

T: +44 (0) 333 666 5483

F: +44 (0) 870 130 6690

enquiry@liveperson.com

www.liveperson.com

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 behavioural analytics, producing connections based on a true

understanding of business objectives and customer needs. LivePerson

is headquartered in New York City with offices in San Francisco,

Atlanta, Tel Aviv, London, and Melbourne.

ResultsOne big early success of Live Chat was identification

of a problem the website had with the latest version

of Internet Explorer. Essentially the website would

not work when viewed in IE v10. Sun Life Direct was

able to identify this problem and fix it quickly due

to the immediate feedback Live Chat provided to

the digital team.

Sun Life Direct improved a number of aspects of

its website performance as a result of customer

feedback via Live Chat, smoothing out the

customer journey and simplifying language.

Sun Life Direct today estimates conversions have

increased up to 30% where Live Chat is deployed,

when compared to self-service users.

Customer satisfaction with Live Chat has been very

high, exit surveys showing up to a 93.5% customer

satisfaction (CSAT) figure. Importantly this meets

one of Sun Life Direct’s principal objectives – to

offer as good customer service online as its

customers enjoy on the telephone.

So popular has the new Live Chat channel proved

to be that call agents at 2Touch are reportedly

‘queuing up” to join the Live Chat team.

In terms of costs, Sun Life Direct is aware that call

agents can handle more live chats than phone

calls per hour, typically twice as many, which

potentially lowers their cost per customer

service enquiry dramatically.

Business results of LiveEngage :

30% increase in

sales conversions.

Up to 93.5% higher customer

satisfaction (CSAT).

2X as many enquiries

handled per hour by

call agents.

Lower cost per customer

service enquiry.

Improved website

performance.

Educated customers

to self-serve.

32014 LivePerson, Inc.©

“

”

One of the things I love about Live Chat is that it raises the visibility of text and allows me to analyse it much more easily that I can do with voice. We get immediate feedback from our customers on the chat agent call sheets which we can analyse

and then use to improve our website & overall customer service performance. We chose to work with LivePerson because they

are clearly a leading exponent of this new & important marketing discipline.

– Colin McDougall, Head of Digital Sun Life Direct