United Way of Greater Atlanta: Connecting People in Need with Community Resources

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms

• Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

United Way of Greater Atlanta, one of the largest United Way agencies in the United States, wanted to expand on the tremendous success of its 211 telephone referral program, which connects community members with a wide variety of social services. The agency realized that it could build on the success of the 211 program and extend its benefits to a larger population by revamping its website and adding online engagement options. The agency underwent 18 months of strategic planning, fundraising, and development work before launching its new online portal in April 2011. The agency added access to services by email, text message, and live chat.

United Way of Greater Atlanta is one of the largest United Way agencies in the United States, with more than $100 million in annual revenue. It invests in more than 200 charitable programs in its 13-county territory. The agency wanted to expand on the tremendous success of its 211 telephone referral program, which connects community members with a wide variety of social services. In 2012, the agency launched a revamped website with several new options for engaging with agents: email, text message, and live chat powered by LivePerson. The new e-services emphasis increased the total number of contacts by 25 percent. And visitors are overwhelmingly positive about the live chat channel, with satisfaction rates for waiting time, agent performance, and issue resolution all above 95 percent.

For live chat, United Way of Greater Atlanta selected LivePerson’s LiveEngage platform, which the team found easy to use, reliable, and scalable. The agency deployed LiveEngage concurrently with the other new channels and the refreshed website. The team felt that it was important to have highly skilled agents on the live chat channel. The agency’s database manager conducted training for the live chat agents who were chosen. A Click-to-Chat button is always available to website visitors, regardless of what page they are on. In addition, United Way of Greater Atlanta extends proactive chat invitations to visitors who visit certain pages or use certain keywords. United Way of Greater Atlanta uses LiveEngage’s content targeting tools to send timely information to people browsing the website.

• The agency deployed LiveEngage concurrently with the other new channels and the refreshed website.
• The team felt that it was important to have highly skilled agents on the live chat channel.
• A Click-to-Chat button is always available to website visitors, regardless of what page they are on.

• 99% resolution rate with first live chat conversation
• 96% satisfaction with live chat response time
• 100% found the live chat agent to be helpful