CUSTOMER SUCCESS
Discount Tire Direct
The Rubber Meets the Road with
Live Engagement and Predictive
Intelligent Targeting
2014
CUSTOMER SUCCESS Discount Tire Direct
Employee engagement is a central lynchpin for Discount Tire Direct that directly
cascades to how the company connects with its customers. Making sure this extends to
Company Profile
Founded in 1960 and
headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, Discount Tire Direct
is a subsidiary of Discount Tire
Company with 875-plus stores
its digital channels is a priority—and LivePerson is helping to ensure this is a reality. The initial deployment
of LiveEngage, which included proactive live chat based on rules and enrichment analytics, proved highly
successful. Average order value jumped 25 percent—an increase of $100 to $120 per order—while conversion
rates increased more than 18 percent with live chat. And with the addition of Predictive Intelligent Targeting,
Discount Tire Direct witnessed another four to six percent increase in conversion rates and a higher
chat acceptance rate.
in 29 states.
Business Results
Out of the Gate
Achieved 18%+ conversion
rates via chat engagement
Sustaining 98%+ CSAT
When Discount Tire Direct was founded in 1994, the Internet was just a blip on the radar screen—if even
that—for most companies. The primary revenue channel for Discount Tire Direct was print ads in Car and
Driver, Road and Track, and other magazines.
When Jay Reed joined Discount Tire Direct in 2000, the company had a website but it was solely an
informational channel; there was no e-commerce component. But within a couple of years Discount
Tire Direct recognized that its customers wanted not only information but also the ability to conduct
25% higher AOV
transactions from the website.
9,000 annual visitors accept
Focused on delivering experiences that map to customer requirements, the company launched an
chat invitation who would
have left—and not
returned--website
e-commerce element in late 2002. “It has evolved over time,” Reed notes. “We wanted to provide more
than just transactional capabilities. We wanted the ability for our customers to make the most informed
decisions possible and to deliver an experience that aligns with the one in our retail stores.”
With Predictive
Intelligent Targeting
Increased conversion rates
4% to 6%
Improved chat acceptance 1%
Flattened impact of seasonality
and marketing promotions
© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.
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CUSTOMER SUCCESS Discount Tire Direct
Challenges
•
Deliver outstanding customer digital experience
•
Increase e-commerce
conversion rates
•
Maintain high in-store
CSAT via digital channel
The Solution
Cultural bearings
Reed started off at Discount Tire Direct as a sales representative in the Call Center Sales team and was
promoted to sales manager in 2008. One of the things that attracted him to Discount Tire Direct is the
company’s culture. It is very much focused on customers and employees.
“Our Founder and CEO, Bruce Halle, believes that everything starts with employees, and how they feel
about their jobs translates into how the connect with our customers,” Reed explains. And it isn’t simply a
matter of words. Discount Tire Direct, which uses the Net Promoter Score framework to measure customer
satisfaction, maintains a customer satisfaction rate in excess of 98 percent.
Engagement Model:
Consequently, connections are very important for Discount Tire Direct. Take as an example the company’s
Proactive live chat on
new headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. When Discount Tire Direct moved into the facility five years ago,
e-commerce site
the management team elected to tear down the cube walls separating its employees. “We wanted to break
Under the Hood:
LiveEngage platform
using Predictive Targeting
and enrichment analytics
for website and
down barriers blocking communications,” Reed recalls. “The employees welcomed the change, and it has
proven to be a great decision.”
Engagement: from employees to customers
agent optimization
Discount Tire Direct had experimented with an on-premise live chat solution when it initially added
LivePerson Customer Success:
removed. “It wasn’t targeted and anyone could chat with one of our agents,” he says.
Implementation of
LiveEngage and integration
of Predictive Targeting;
ongoing training and
technical support
e-commerce to its website in 2003. But it was simply a passive button called Click to Talk and was soon
In late 2011, Reed and his management team decided to revisit the use of live chat deployment on the
Discount Tire Direct website. “We wanted to rethink how we engaged customers on our website, seeking to
make it the best buying experience that we could for our customers,” Reed describes. “This prompted us to
return to the idea of live chat.”
The Discount Tire Direct team investigated several different solutions, including LivePerson. “What initially
attracted Discount Tire Direct to LivePerson was the ability to target visitors with whom we wanted to engage,”
Reed says. “And as we embarked on the path of choosing a solution, we uncovered additional benefits such as
The self-learning
algorithms
in Predictive
Intelligent
Targeting help us
to engage with
customers at
moments when
they need help.
– Jay Reed, Sales Manager,
the ability to conduct secure transactions from the chat engagement window.”
Prior to signing a contract, the LivePerson team collaborated with the Discount Tire Direct team to demonstrate
the business value of adding proactive chat engagement as part of its e-commerce offering. “From all of the
different business partners that we have, I’ve always felt that our partnership with LivePerson was great,” Reed
says. “We never felt like we were just a customer.”
Burning rubber out of the gate
The response of customers was very positive. One area was average order value. Specifically, Discount Tire
Direct found that customers who engage via live chat purchase between $100 and $125 more than customers
who self serve or go through the voice channel. “It adds up to orders that are about 25 percent more than those
through other channels,” Reed observes. “Engaging customers through live chat simply gives us the ability to
make a more meaningful connection. We can offer them information in the chat engagement window that
cannot be provided through our other customer engagement channels.”
Discount Tire Direct
© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.
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CUSTOMER SUCCESS Discount Tire Direct
The ability to engage with customers through live chat based on their
behavior, at just the right moments, was a critical requirement for us.
– Jay Reed, Sales Manager, Discount Tire Direct
Another benefit Reed and his team saw was conversion rates. “Because we are able to proactively engage with customers when they are at
pivotal moments, we realized conversion rates six or seven times higher in live chat than that for self-serve hot leads,” he says. “With LivePerson,
we are able to have the right conversations at the right moments.”
Perhaps the most impressive result is the number of visitors who would have left the Discount Tire Direct website without making a purchase.
Through post-chat surveys, Reed’s team has found that around 9,000 visitors who accepted a proactive chat invitation would have left the
website and not returned. With a 20-plus percent conversion rate with live chat, this equates to a substantial amount of sales that was lost but
then recovered. “Being able to get in front of our visitors and provide them with that personalized connection really matters,” Reed emphasizes.
“LiveEngage gives us that ability.”
There are a couple use-case scenarios that Discount Tire Direct tracks. “Our customer journeys don’t all take the same route,” Reed notes. Some
customers are ready to order; they just need some assistance or additional information. For these customers, Reed’s sales chat team helps them
complete their purchase in the e-commerce shopping cart on the website, helping them build an order that meets their specifications.
For other customers, they may not be ready to place an order; rather, they need information and would return in a month or two to complete the
order. Here, sales agents answer their questions and build trust.
Getting enrichment analytics
Creating a process for analysis of live chat conversations—often called enrichment analytics—is another area where the LivePerson Customer Success
manager provided support. “We created an exit survey process for live chat that mirrors the same process on our website,” Reed notes. The survey
process used by Discount Tire Direct is based on a scale of one to five. Any survey without an “Excellent” or “Satisfied” rating is automatically pulled and
sent to Reed. He then reviews the chat conversation and coaches the sales chat agent on what could have been done differently.
“Our use of conversations analysis goes beyond sales coaching,” Reed adds. “LivePerson is not just a revenue-generator for us. One of the other
advantages of conversations analysis is that it enables us to see how customers behave on our website. It lets us know where they are having
trouble and make appropriate changes that improves the customer buying experience.”
Intelligent targeting
In mid 2013, the LivePerson Customer Success manager approached Reed about migrating from manual rules-based targeting to Predictive
Intelligent Targeting—an algorithm technology that examines visitor behavior patterns, interaction records, and other historical data.
LivePerson was in the process of making Predictive Intelligent Targeting generally available and was seeking a small subset of customers
to serve as early adopters.
“There is a lot of seasonality in our business, and we run different promotions throughout the year,” Reed says. Proactive chat based on manual
rules weren’t sufficiently adaptive, and we couldn’t capture changes in customer behavior across the seasons.”
© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.
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CUSTOMER SUCCESS Discount Tire Direct
Our Founder and CEO Bruce Halle believes that it starts with your
employees, and that impacts how you deal with your customers.
– Jay Reed, Sales Manager, Discount Tire Direct
In late 2013, Reed and his team made a decision to migrate from manual rules to Predictive Intelligent Targeting. The rollover took a matter of a
few days, and was facilitated with the help of the Customer Success manager. “The self-learning algorithms in Predictive Targeting help us to engage
with customers at moments when they need help,” Reed reports. “We’ve seen promising results in just the first couple months, and we anticipate
ongoing progress.”
Conversion rates increased four to six percent with Predictive Intelligent Targeting. “We were at about 18 percent,” Reed reports. “Once we
turned on Predictive Targeting, we saw this number increase to 22 or 23 percent. Just a few percentage points make a huge difference in
terms of total sales.”
Chat acceptance is another area where Reed and his team have seen positive returns. “We saw about a one percent increase here,” he says.
“I believe this is an indication that with Predictive Intelligent Targeting, we are better able to target our customers.”
Rubber meets the road
Discount Tire Direct can make some unique claims compared to most other companies that have been in business 50-plus years. For example,
the company has increased revenue every single year and has never had a layoff. The promise of Halle to his employees—“Do a good job, and I’ll
provide lifelong opportunity for you”—isn’t a hollow statement.
The rubber truly meets the road for Discount Tire Direct when it comes to extending this employee experience to customers. “We chat with a
little more than 2,000 customers every month,” Reed observes. “We want to hit a satisfaction rating as close to 100 percent as possible. We’re
averaging somewhere between 98 and 99 percent, and thus there is still room for growth.”
And Reed isn’t joking regarding his statement that “there is still room for growth.” The goal of Discount Tire Direct is to have every one of its
customers walk away—or in this case ‘click away’—satisfied with their experience, having gotten the information and support they needed.
“With tools like LiveEngage, we are able to deliver on this commitment,” Reed asserts.
About LivePerson
LivePerson, 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 San Francisco, Atlanta, Tel Aviv, London,
Amsterdam, and Melbourne.
Contact
LivePerson, Inc.
T: 212.991.1794
475 Tenth Ave
F: 212.609.4233
5th Floor
[email protected]
New York, NY 10018
www.liveperson.com
© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.
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