success story harvard business services, inc.due to this staggering volume, delaware requires that...

2014

SUCCESS STORY

Harvard Business Services, Inc.Engaging with Entrepreneurs Builds the Business of Forming Businesses

© 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 2

Nine years ago, Harvard Business Services replaced an AOL Instant Messaging channel with LivePerson Click to Chat and Click to Call for sales and customer service inquiries. Since then, the provider of Delaware business incorporation services upgraded to

the LiveEngage platform and added credit card payment capabilities, proactive chat, content targeting, and

the mobile Click-to-Chat tool to the deployment. Today, 10 percent of all completed transactions involve live

chat at some point in the process, and five percent of the company’s huge database of current customers

has had questions answered through the channel. In addition, a recent effort to make Click-to-Chat buttons

more prominent doubled live chat volume.

Thanks to the country’s strongest laws protecting the rights of shareholders, members, and boards of

directors of corporations, Delaware has long been recognized as the best U.S. state in which to incorporate

a business. As a result, more than half of all U.S. publicly traded companies, including 63 percent of the

Fortune 500, are incorporated in the state.

Due to this staggering volume, Delaware requires that all business with its Division of Corporations be

conducted through a registered agent, who serves as an intermediary between the state and a company.

Three large corporations dominated the registered agent market when Rick Bell founded Harvard Business

Services, Inc. in 1981.

“My father had worked for one of the big three and saw that personalized customer service was lacking

across the industry,” relates Mike Bell, Rick’s son and the company’s current director of marketing. “He

started the business out of the basement of our former home in Wilmington, Delaware, and advertised his

services in newspapers and magazines. And against all odds, the business not only survived, but thrived.”

Thirty-three years later, Harvard Business Services is the leading provider of business formation services for

Delaware LLCs and corporations. The company now occupies a state-of-the-art headquarters facility in the

coastal town of Lewes, where 24 employees deliver services for a growing global clientele. “We have helped

our customers form more than 110,000 companies, and 60 percent of our business comes from repeat

clients and referrals,” notes Brett Melson, the company’s director of sales. “And we have had only had one

complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau since our founding. Consider the volume of business we

conduct, and this is astounding.”

Company ProfileFounded in 1981 by

Richard Bell II, Harvard

Business Services, Inc. is

the leading provider of

business formation services

for Delaware corporations

and LLCs. Based in Lewes,

Delaware, the company’s 24

employees provide services

for a global clientele.

The Results• 100% increase in live

chat volume via more

prominent Click-to-Chat

buttons (from 30 to 50 daily

to 50 to 100)

• 10% of total transactions

used live chat at some

point in the process

• 5% of current customers

used live chat in the past

year to get questions

answered (2,000 out

of 40,000)

CUSTOMER SUCCESS Harvard Business Services, Inc.

https://www.delawareinc.com/

https://www.delawareinc.com/

© 2014 LivePerson, Inc. 3

Maintaining a personal touchCutting-edge technology has always been a factor in the company’s growth. “We started using electronic

documents in 1982 and launched the first version of our proprietary database in 1983,” Melson relates.

“Today, our database is Web-based and provides the underlying infrastructure for our full-service extranet

website, enabling customers to go through the whole process online.”

But this ongoing digital investment never eclipsed Harvard Business Services’ commitment to a

personalized customer experience. “There are many aspects to incorporating—from startup, to

management, to annual fees, to how to open a bank account after the company is formed,” Melson relates.

“As more and more of our business was being done online, we wanted to make sure customers could still

get live help as they worked through the process.”

Melson found that this personal touch was especially important for Harvard Business Services’ growing

international customer base. “I learned that people felt intimidated during phone conversations when

English was not their first language, and they felt pressure to complete the call quickly because of high

international phone charges,” he says.

An early foray into in digital engagementIn response to these needs, Melson set up an AOL Instant Messaging address in 1999, and it quickly became a

popular channel for quick answers to questions that came up during the signup process. “It was old fashioned

instant messaging, and it worked pretty well once we were in a conversation,” he recalls. “But I soon realized

that it was not convenient for clients to connect with us, and the interface wasn’t always user friendly.”

About the time Melson was thinking of finding a new solution, he learned about LivePerson from an

e-commerce company located down the street from Harvard Business Services’ headquarters. “They had

nothing but great things to say about LivePerson,” he remembers. “We went to their office to look at the

technology, and we were excited by all the features it had, its user-friendly interface, and its easy deployment.

And we saw that it would appear much more professional than instant messaging.”

LivePerson helps us extend our corporate culture. It helps us to create meaningful connections

with customers.– Brett Melson, Director of Sales, Harvard Business Services, Inc.

The Challenges • Extend company culture

for personalized service to

convenient online channel

• Increase sales by engaging

with customers at

moments of confusion

• Provide a comfortable

channel to assist

international customers

for whom English is a

second language

The Solution Engagement Model

Live chat and content

targeting for sales and

customer service

Key Capabilities

LiveEngage platform with

proactive chat, content

targeting, social media

engagement, mobile

Click-to-Chat, and secure

credit card transactions


4© 2014 LivePerson, Inc.


Launching a better solutionHarvard Business Services rolled out a LivePerson live chat solution in 2005, and Melson found deployment to be as easy as advertised. “Our

friends at the e-commerce company helped our own talented IT team to set everything up, and it was fast and painless,” he relates.

The company started with Click-to-Chat buttons for those accessing the website on a PC, and Click-to-Call buttons for those on mobile

phones, with Melson fielding both types of inquiries. “It helped us provide a great customer experience,” Melson recalls. “Instant access to a live,

knowledgeable person made all the difference for many clients.”

The agent interface enabled Melson to see at a glance the approximate location and browsing history of each website visitor. “This meant that

I could begin the conversation with a good idea of what was going on,” he explains. “And it was fun when I would find myself chatting with

someone from Alabama and someone from India at the same time.”

Finding time-saving featuresOver time, Melson discovered other LivePerson features that enabled him and his team to deliver even better service. “We learned that with push

pages and pre-defined responses, we didn’t have to type as much as we used to,” he remembers. “Push pages are really nice, because you can see

whether clients actually click on the link. When they don’t, I can copy and paste excerpts from the page I just pushed into the chat window, so I’m

hitting them up from both sides.”

The company’s library of pre-defined responses has continually evolved as website content has changed. “As we add more pages, we have to

come up with more canned responses,” Melson explains. “As we add relevant blog articles, we need responses for those topics. But creating them

saves a lot of time in the long run.”

Upgrading the platformBasic Click-to-Chat and Click-to-Call services were very successful for Harvard Business Services for a number of years, but the company started

expanding its digital engagement footprint after Melson had a conversation with his LivePerson account representative about 18 months ago.

“He said, ‘Hey, you guys are using an old version of LivePerson,’” Melson remembers. “My first thought was, ‘It’s working great; how could they fix

it?’ But when he showed me all the new features in the LiveEngage platform, I was excited.”

Melson shared the information with Bell and his marketing team, and they immediately saw the potential. “I said, ‘We need to do this,’” Bell recalls.

“My team had never been too involved with live chat, but when we saw the potential from a marketing perspective, we started working directly

with the LivePerson rep to set up a lot of the new features.”

When we saw the potential from a marketing perspective, we started working directly with the LivePerson rep to set up the new features.

– Mike Bell, Director of Marketing, Harvard Business Services, Inc.



Improving and testing the customer experienceBell’s team has also worked to improve the customer experience by customizing the visual elements of live chat. “We created brand-consistent

text and graphics for our Click-to-Chat buttons, and we added a photo of each agent for our proactive chat invitations and the live chat

engagement window,” he reports. “We want our visitors to have a personal connection with our agents, so the photos are really them.”

As a part of a project to refresh the website, the team recently conducted A/B Testing to identify tweaks to the customer experience that would

produce the best outcomes. One enhancement identified through the testing was to make the Click-to-Chat buttons more prominent, and

place them on every page of Harvard Business Services’ website. “The buttons are in different places depending on the page, but they are always

prominent,” Bell explains. “Once we made this change, our live chat volume immediately doubled.”

Bell and Melson also make extensive use of LivePerson’s enrichment analytics features to analyze data and gauge customer feedback. Agent

reports help them keep track of volume and conversions, and the transcripts of the conversations themselves often help the company to

provide a better website experience. “Just yesterday, I pasted a live chat conversation into an email to Mike, and suggested that we create a new

section on the website to address a particular issue that has been coming up,” Melson relates. Adds Bell: “It was this same kind of feedback that

prompted us to create an online order form for our mail forwarding service several months ago.”

Connecting with mobile and social usersIn another recent project, Bell’s team took advantage of LiveEngage features to improve connections with visitors on mobile devices and social

media sites. “We recently added the mobile Click-to-Chat tool to our new responsive website,” he explains. “The engagement window fits the

device and is an overlay to our website, which means we can have a conversation without the client leaving our site.” Adds Melson: “Just the

other day, we had a gentleman who was just amazed at how easy this was. It was the first time he had seen mobile chat technology, and he

wondered why everyone doesn’t use it.”

The team also added Click-to-Chat and Click-to-Call buttons to Harvard Business Services’ blog, email newsletters, and Facebook site. “At the

beginning of each chat, I’m able to see where the customer is coming from—a proactive chat invitation, a mobile device, our Facebook site, a

newsletter, or our blog,” Melson says. “It really gives me a good context for providing them the help they need.”

People felt intimidated when English was not their first language, and they felt pressure to complete the call quickly because of high

international phone charges.– Brett Melson, Director of Sales, Harvard Business Services, Inc.



I’m able to see where the customer is coming from—a proactive chat invitation, a mobile device, our Facebook site, a newsletter, or our blog.

– Brett Melson, Director of Sales, Harvard Business Services, Inc.

Impressive ResultsAfter nine years of LivePerson, Melson continues to conduct most of Harvard Business Services’ live chat conversations. “I do about 90 percent

of them,” he explains. “It is easy for me because I know where the content is that will provide the detailed answers that clients need. And I have

done it for so long that I can easily have four or five conversations at a time.”

Other members of Melson’s sales team step in as needed, and this has become more common as volume has grown. “Since we expanded the

visibility of our Click-to-Chat buttons, we are having 50 to 100 live conversations per day, compared with 30 to 50 previously,” Melson reports.

“And since I’m conducting multiple conversations at a time, my log often shows 15 to 20 hours of chatting time during an eight-hour workday.”

This live chat volume represents a significant percentage of the total business closed by the company. “We estimate that ten percent of

customers who formed a company with us this year spoke with us via live chat at some point in the process,” Melson relates. “It could be a

one-minute conversation checking the availability of a company name, or a 90-minute chat with many detailed questions about all aspects

of incorporating.”

Another sign of the popularity of the live chat channel is that five percent of Harvard Business Services’ database of 40,000 current customers

have used live chat in the past year. “People who have already formed their companies occasionally have questions that come up,” Melson says.

“Many of them see the live chat link in our weekly email newsletter or on our blog, and they find it to be an extremely convenient way to get a

quick answer. And it saves resources on our end because it deflects phone inquiries, which require more staff time”

Extending brand valuePerhaps even more importantly, LivePerson digital engagement has helped Harvard Business Services to build on its valuable brand. “LivePerson

helps us extend our corporate culture,” Melson contends. “Clients might just need to make a quick payment, or they might not be able to find

their Delaware file number. They can click to chat with us, and in a matter of seconds their issue is resolved.”

When asked for any advice he might offer to other small businesses regarding digital engagement, he does not hesitate. “I can’t imagine

any company that LivePerson technology couldn’t benefit,” he says. “It helps us to create meaningful connections with customers, and I am

convinced that it is a big factor in the large amount of repeat business that we earn.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #LiveEngage

About LivePersonLivePerson, 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 Atlanta, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Milan, Paris, Tel Aviv, Tokyo 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

success story harvard business services, inc.due to this staggering volume, delaware requires that...

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