Livechat Software

LiveChat Software (WSE:LVC)[4] is a customer service software company and developer of LiveChat - software as a service-based help desk software and online chat software for ecommerce sales, customer support and lead generation.

LiveChat Software
TypePublic
WSE: LVC
ISINPLLVTSF00010
IndustrySoftware
FoundedWrocław, Poland 2002 (2002)
Headquarters
Wrocław
,
Poland
Number of locations
2 offices (2011)
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Mariusz Cieply (CEO)
  • Urszula Jarzebowska (CFO)
  • Szymon Klimczak (CMO)
  • Bartosz Olchowka (CTO)
  • Piotr Bednarek (CCO)
  • Maciej Malesa (CIO)[1]
ProductsChatBot, HelpDesk, Knowledge Base, LiveChat
Services
Revenue
  • 89.4 million zł (2018)[2]
  • 76.3 million zł (2017)[2]
  • 48.3 million zł (2018)[2]
  • 42.9 million zł (2017)[2]
Number of employees
145[3]
Subsidiaries
  • LiveChat, Inc.
Websitewww.livechat.com

The company has offices in Wrocław, Poland and Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It serves more than 28,000 paid customers[5] in over 150 countries,[6][7] including Adobe, AirAsia, Best Buy, Better Business Bureau, ING, Huawei, Orange and PayPal.[8][9][10]

History

Founded in 2002 as LiveChat Sp. z o.o. (LLC) in Wrocław, Poland, since October 2007 runs as a stock company.

In October 2006 50% of company stock was bought by Capital Partners S.A., investment and consultancy firm publicly listed at Warsaw Stock Exchange. In February 2008 Capital Partners S.A. decided to follow its strategy of having fewer companies but larger individual transactions and sold its entire stake[11] along with another 13% of company stock to another publicly listed company, Gadu-Gadu S.A..[12] This way LiveChat Software became another Polish company in Naspers capital group, joining Gadu-Gadu and Allegro.pl.[13]

In January 2011, the management team sought to get back a controlling equity stake in the company and started a management buyout. After Naspers agreed in June 2011 to sell its entire stake, the founders teamed up with private equity firm Tar Heel Capital to finalize the buyout of the 60% stake. After the transaction was completed in September 2011, the founders own 60% of the stake, while Tar Heel Capital owns 40% of the company.[8][9]

LiveChat Software has been introduced to the Warsaw Stock Exchange in April 2014 with the symbol LVC.[14]

Products

LiveChat

LiveChat is main product sold by the company. It is a live support software and help desk software used by companies to provide real-time communication with customers using different communication channels: online chat on the website and inside mobile applications, email and social media (such as Facebook Messenger and Twitter).

LiveChat Software owns the technology it uses in the product, however in areas unrelated directly to chat, the company relies on 3rd party services. Technology partners include: Elastic for search and analytics engine,[15] Postmark for delivery of transactional emails,[16] Recurly for subscription billing[17] and Pingdom for performance monitoring and uptime tracking.[18]

On the software market, company cooperates with such companies as Microsoft, MySQL AB,[19] Intel or Red Hat.[20]

ChatBot

ChatBot is the second product sold by the company. It was initially launched and developed as BotEngine and was rebranded to ChatBot in November 2018.[21] It is an artificial intelligence-based bot platform. It creates intelligent chatbots to communicate with customers in messaging apps, such as Messenger and Slack. It integrates with LiveChat.[6][22] Other features include rich messages, an intelligent matching system, entities system (that allow to validate and save user input) and an open API.[23]

HelpDesk

HelpDesk is the third product sold by the company. It is a system for tracking, prioritizing and resolving customer support tickets. Customers can leave messages for companies by using dedicated email addresses. Team members can create tickets if customer queries came from other communication channels, such as LiveChat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or a phone call.[24]

All inquiries are collected as tickets and assigned with the appropriate statuses and categories within the application. The application stores customer profiles and the history of their previous messages.[24][25][26]

Knowledge Base

Knowledge Base is a tool that builds a self-service help center. It can be used both as an internal database for agents and an external public help center for customers.[27] The internal widget is equipped with AI support that suggests articles answering customer queries.[28]

Past products

Products offered in the past, but currently discontinued are: GG Pro (which was a corporate instant messenger) and Chat Server, which was a chat software for moderated chat rooms. Besides developing and selling communication solutions, in 2004-2010 LiveChat Software was the owner of one of the first Polish online chat portals - POLChat.

Another product offered by the company was chat.io. It was a chat widget for websites, apps and social messaging with message sneak peaks, agent ratings and chat routing. It allowed integrations with multiple communication channels, like Facebook Messenger. It was a chat platform for developers who like to customize product for their needs. The chat.io platform provided APIs to allow developers to build features atop the current offering.[29] The product has been discontinued and became a part of LiveChat.[30][31]

Awards

In October 2007 LiveChat (formerly LIVECHAT Contact Center) was listed among top Customer Support and Feedback applications in Inside CRM report[32] recommended by Guy Kawasaki.[33]

In 2011 Deloitte listed LiveChat Software as one of the fastest growing Central European technology companies in Deloitte Technology Fast 50 program - the company was selected for the 2011 award based on its 545% revenue growth over the previous five years (2005–2010).[34] In 2012 the company was listed 18th in the same ranking, based on its 830% revenue growth.[35]

In 2013 the company has been listed by Red Herring in the group of the most innovative companies from across Europe.[36] It has been recognized by Deloitte in its annual Technology Fast 50 program and listed 18th with 624% revenue growth.[37]

In 2015, during the Private Equity Forum & Awards Gala organized by the Executive Club with the support of Polish Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, LiveChat Software has been awarded “Private Equity Diamonds in the category Portfolio company (small cap).[38] Later that year, LiveChat Software was shortlisted for the European Small and Mid-Cap Awards organised by EuropeanIssuers, FESE and the European Commission. One of three companies entered for the awards by Warsaw Stock Exchange, LiveChat was among the only CEE companies to be shortlisted.[39][40]

Corporate Social Responsibility

The company has supported organizations during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, by offering its services for free to non-profits and for-profits helping towards the Covid-19 cause.[41]

It also has long history of supporting the customer service community and individuals working in that space with tools that help with their development. One of the examples is Typing Speed Test - a free tool that works as an online speed typing contest. It is used to improve efficiency and accuracy of typing skills (measured in words per minute). Number of tests taken with the tool already exceeds tens of millions.[42] Another example is a Customer Service Training - a free customer experience training for agents and customer service professionals.[43]

See also

References
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  2. "LIVECHAT SOFTWARE SA : Financial Data Forecasts Estimates and Expectations". MarketScreener. 2019-05-16. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  3. GlobalStockPicking (2019-07-31). "LiveChat Software – company with a strong track record". GlobalStockPicking.com. Retrieved 2019-08-04.
  4. "Google Finance". 2015-07-14.
  5. "StockWatch: Asseco BS Q2 results; Quercus TFI Aum; LiveChat clients; Lotos fuel H1 report". biznes.pap.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2019-08-04.
  6. Guta, Michael (2017-10-03). "LiveChat Teams with BotEngine to Make You Available to Customers – Anytime". SmallBizTrends. Retrieved 4 October 2017.
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  9. Tolentino, Mellisa (2011-10-25). "LiveChat Completes Management Buy-Out, Now 60% Employee Owned". SiliconANGLE. Retrieved 17 January 2012.
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  12. "4.00M for LiveChat Software S.A." 2008-02-02.
  13. "Gadu-Gadu invests in LiveChat Software". 2008-02-02.
  14. "Stock Card - LiveChat LVC". 2014-04-12.
  15. LiveChat case study helped Elastic.co, Retrieved 2016-08-19.
  16. Postmark helped LiveChat scale to 10,000 customers Postmark, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  17. LiveChat more than doubles its subscribers in 18 months with the help of Recurly. Recurly, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  18. How LiveChat uses Pingdom. Pingdom, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  19. "LiveChat Software listed at MySQL AB Partners & Solutions". Archived from the original on 2008-06-15. Retrieved 2008-02-25.
  20. "Red Hat Software Catalog Application Profile".
  21. Del Rowe, Sam (2017-11-27). "LiveChat Launches New Chatbot Capabilities". Smart Customer Service. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  22. "LiveChat aiming at true AI with BotEngine launch".
  23. Jurczyk, Luiza. "ChatBot evolution. How our small platform developed into a comprehensive chatbot solution". Chatbots Magazine. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  24. "LiveChat Launches HelpDesk Online Ticketing System". Smart Customer Service. 2019-05-15. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
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  28. Pliszka, Matt. "Knowledge Base - Smart knowledge base to support your customers and agents". Product Hunt. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  29. Sachdeva, Anmol (2017-10-14). "Top 10 Intercom Alternatives You Can Use". Beebom. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  30. Bilinska, Patrycja (2019-04-10). "Chat.io Becomes LiveChat – All You Should Know". LiveChat Blog. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  31. Brooks, David (2018-06-12). "Can You Do Top-of-Funnel Marketing Automation Without CRM?". Business2Community. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  32. "The Web Entrepreneur's Customer Service Toolbox: 100 Hacks and Resources". 2007-10-24. Retrieved 2008-02-25.
  33. Kawasaki, Guy (2007-10-25). "A Night in the Life of Guy Kawasaki Plus Cool Stuff Friday". How to Change the World. Archived from the original on 2007-10-27. Retrieved 2008-02-25. This is a compilation of useful tools and services to maintain a high-level of customer service. These tools help you keep in touch, run meetings, do accounting, provide support, and solicit feedback.
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  35. "2012 Deloitte technology Fast 50 in Central Europe". Deloitte. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
  36. "2013 Red Herring Europe Finalists". Red Herring. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
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  43. Walters, Jeannie. "What makes a great online CX training course - and what are the best free/cheap ones?". MyCustomer. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
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