LivePerson Launches New Partner Program to Target SMB Sales

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LivePerson, the online messaging, marketing and analytics provider, has launched a new global partner program designed to help partners sell its conversational commerce offering to SMBs. Conversational commerce means interacting with businesses through messaging and chat apps.

LivePerson’s conversational platform, LiveEngage, allows businesses to communicate with their consumers on digital messaging channels from a single place. It includes built-in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered bots.

LivePerson’s Avi Kedmi

Avi Kedmi, executive vice president of LivePerson’s commercial business group, tells Channel Partners his company traditionally has worked with SIs, consulting firms and partners who specialize in business process outsourcing. The new program is geared primarily to MSPs, VARs and digital agencies.

“But now we’ve pioneered and launched a global partner program for conversational commerce that’s designed for the thousands of solution providers who service the SMB market,” he said. “We’re seeing some of the world’s largest brands shift from analog voice to digital — and fully embracing a conversational commerce strategy. They’re seeing incredible results and we know the SMB market can also benefit tremendously from our solutions. The majority of SMB IT spend flows through the channel, which presents a massive opportunity for partners to deliver conversational commerce solutions to their customers — they have proven themselves as a trusted adviser and reliable service provider over their many years of service.”

Partners that work with SMBs retain full control of their customer relationships, including billing, bundling, pricing and packaging, according to the company. They also can charge for solution implementation, optimization and ongoing support while LivePerson works behind the scenes providing support throughout every aspect of the customer life cycle.

“Over the last few years, partners have been feeling margin pressure since the services they sell are quickly becoming commoditized,” Kedmi said. “LivePerson’s partner program creates a way for solution providers to make high-margin recurring revenue (30 percent-plus margin) and add a ton of value to their customers — increasing sales and decreasing customer-care costs. This is a business strategy inflection point for solution providers because they will now be able to help their customers drive sales and growth instead of adding more overhead.”

Conversational commerce allows businesses to create a convenient and personalized digital experience for consumers, answering their questions, providing information, and completing transactions directly in the messaging channels that they already use every day, LivePerson said.

“We’re excited about our recent partnership with LivePerson and really feel we can elevate our customer’s engagement strategy with conversational commerce,” said Charlie Meyer, president of Sudora Computer Services. “Our customers know they have this dire need to better connect with their consumers and we’ve always wanted to help, but we’ve never had access to the right solution to do so. Now we do.”