LiveAgent is the most reviewed and #1 rated help desk software for SMB in 2019, enabling businesses to provide live customer support across multiple communication channels, and consolidate their support efforts under a single platform. As chatbots continue to threaten traditional support, I sat for a talk with Matej Kukucka, Senior Growth Marketer, and Andrej Csizmadia, Junior Marketer, to find out what LiveAgent is all about.
Please describe the company’s vision, values, and evolution so far.
It all started when we needed a good ticketing system for our other products. We needed an all-in-one helpdesk software the would include all existing communication channels, but such a solution was not available at the time, so we decided to build our own. After noticing a significant increase in our clients’ customer satisfaction, we decided to share it and help other companies make their customers happy.
In December 2010, the first release of the current LiveAgent Multi-channel help desk was launched. Our success was immediate, and we received great reviews from our customers.
We concentrated on developing our 2 best selling products –
Post Affiliate Pro, an affiliate marketing software, and
LiveAgent, a multichannel help desk solution. Our headquarters are located in the heart of Europe, Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. We are a privately owned company of 50 colleagues.
The financial directory in Slovakia under the ministry of finance has hired our services to simplify and digitize their operations. They had a huge amount of inquiries, about 2 million per month, so they needed an extensive solution like LiveAgent. This was one of the major steps of moving Slovakia’s government services into the digital world.
We are currently among the most successful IT companies in Slovakia. The group includes colleagues from Eset, Sli.do, Sygic, WebSupport, NiceReply and many other brilliant businesses in our country. Our values are built around 3 main pillars – passion for what we do, customer centricity, as we always put our customers on the first place, and diversity in terms of providing an environment built of colleagues from several countries and minorities and supports and boosts different ideas and beliefs.
Many customers fear of integrating their communications because of the security aspect. How do you overcome that?
Security was, is and always will be one of the core parts of our business. We take it very seriously as we rely on several layers of protection, different suppliers of technologies, multiple backups and continuous overview of both hardware and software.
Last year GDPR entered into the game and we had to comply because security is one of the main pillars of our company. We want customers to be able to store their data regarding their business and customer communications.
We employ a team of dedicated professionals who continually monitor for security breaches and hacks. The online infrastructure we utilize is sourced from reputable providers we trust. Rest assured, we are committed to maintaining the confidentiality, encryption, and security of all customer information.
What are your tips for Building Positive Customer Relationships?
Know each of your customers as if they were your best customer. Know the history of their orders, what they like and what they don’t. LiveAgent can help you do that, but if you don’t have many customers it has to be this way by default. Know each of your customers on the individual level.
How do you envision the future of online communications in 5 years from now?
Through marketing even more personalized messages to customers, different figures arise regarding the provisioning of several brands. Experiential marketing and the ability to try, test, feel and get used to products will be a trend in the future since more and more customers build connections with brands, products, and ecosystems.
I also believe we will see a combination of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning becoming smarter and more human-centered. Companies today are trying hard to save money on human resources, but the customers demand a human approach. At LiveAgent we are mostly focusing on the personal human approach and therefore we believe that live chat will still be around, as the majority of people are not interested in talking to chatbots.
We believe that some fields of work will be exchanged by Machine Learning, but mostly it will stay the same.
When the internet started to become a part of our lives, there was a huge leap of technology working for companies, but right now businesses need to focus on the basics. How do you handle customers, are they satisfied? You need to be involved in the process. Technology can be a very helpful hand, but it will never be a substitute for good customer service.
