Getting Ready to Implement?

Six things you can do to expedite the process and ensure success

Engagement Marketing - the practice of targeting visitors at critical moments while they are online with a compelling offer or live assistance in order to drive conversions and sales - offers unprecedented opportunities for maximizing your investments in the Web.

It's a unique and holistic approach, one that goes beyond implementing technology. Your people, marketing initiatives, branding and product strategies, as well asrevenue goals will all play important roles in deploying an Engagement Marketing platform that lives-up your expectations.

The LivePerson Professional Services team will lead you through the complete deployment process using our proven methodology, developed from over 70 deployments of Timpani Sales & Marketing. The team has identified six things you can do to expedite the deployment process, to power your Engagement Marketing efforts, and - most importantly - ensure that you achieve your e-channel goals.

1. Identify your team, goals & deadlines

Tapping the appropriate people for your program management team is a crucial first step. Your program management team should include representatives from IT, your Call Center, and the lines of business whose products the website will promote.

Concrete goals and objectives should be set well before you go live. Monitoring results and making enhancements to better achieve those goals is a crux of Engagement Marketing.

Identify critical deadlines, such as the new website launch, new products to be launched and code freeze. To ensure that your deadlines are realistic, identify the constraints of your program management team, such as commitments to other projects.

2. Ready your e-sales & e-service agents

Your e-sales and e-service agents are on the front line of your Engagement Marketing effort. Call Center management should start the process of screening, hiring and planning how to compensate agents as quickly as possible. Your PS Director can provide you with extensive training for your agents and their supervisors. Additionally, with the aid of LivePerson's staff calculator, your PS Director can help you determine your staffing requirements.

3. Gather your current website metrics & analytics

You'll be asked to demonstrate the impact of your Engagement Marketing on your customers' experience. To do so, you'll need to define your current tracking process and develop performance baselines.

You should also start thinking about the visitor behaviors that could signify abandonment (such as time spent on a specific page). These will serve as the foundation of rules for development. Your PS Director can help you plan and make decisions about how best to use LivePerson's rules engine.

4. Gather the content your other channels provide

Request from each channel a list of the top 10 to 15 questions they're asked most frequently by customers. These lists will help you identify and create the content needed for the pre-composed messages for your Live Chat agents to use.

5. Begin creative development for content and chat invitations

Whether you'll offer promotions to visitors through Timpani's dynamic content capabilities known as SmartBar, or extend invitations to chat with product specialists, you'll need the support of your marketing communications department to ensure your tools adhere to your site's branding standards. Seek their involvement early on.

6. Technology Preparation

There's much you can do to prepare while LivePerson is customizing the code that will be deployed on your site. For example, download and test the Agent Desktop software, and review sample website code to get a feel for the development process.

The PSO has workbooks, methodologies, guidelines, best practices, and training classes for each all of the activities described here. These tools let you leverage our years of experience during your deployment cycle.