AlienVault is a top-rated, award-winning security information and event management (SIEM) provider. AlienVault’s mission is to enable organizations of all sizes to detect and respond to today’s security threats in cloud, on-premise, and hybrid cloud environments.
Over 5,000 customers across the globe (including Subaru, U.S. Air Force, and Dole) trust AlienVault to provide highly intelligent security that is both affordable and simple to use. Their Unified Security Management™ (USM™) offering delivers a comprehensive array of security capabilities to help organizations meet the need for effective threat detection, incident response, and compliance. These capabilities include asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, behavioral monitoring, SIEM, and intrusion detection.
Soon after implementing Messaging & Live Chat, AlienVault started to see results, including:
- 80% growth quarter-over-quarter
- 46% chat-to-opportunity conversion
- 17% opportunity-to-deal rate
The Need For A Seamless Sales Solution
In June of 2014, AlienVault was experimenting with live chat services for sales as part of an overall strategy to increase revenue and their customer base, and began using LivePerson on the sales front (along with Footprint chat). The team knew that no matter which software they used, one of their key requirements for any chat solution was the ability to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce (the team’s primary CRM for all sales/marketing activities and lead tracking).
AlienVault had recently brought on Graham Cohen, a Web Product Manager within the team responsible for managing front-end products and operations such as the Open Threat Exchange, marketing website, Salesforce and Marketo integrations, and the company’s service-layer integration. Graham was tasked with fleshing out the organization’s live chat program further, and quickly realized that their current chat provider was not meeting their needs.
Graham and his team discovered that their provider’s Salesforce integration did not offer an intuitive UI, resulting in sales chat agents wasting valuable time in their attempts to pass information from chats into Salesforce. In practice, they were copying and pasting chat data into the Salesforce lead records (displayed in an iframe), leading to team-wide frustration and hindering the flow of their overall sales process.
Furthermore, they were not getting the level of analytics and reporting they needed to prove the ROI of their chat program. Graham was responsible for making data-driven decisions in regards to chat performance and future strategies. In his previous attempts to dive into the data and find, for example, the URLs where chats were started from, he faced unexpected difficulties. Since their chat did not offer analytics reports that could easily be exported to CSV, Graham found himself manually copying analytics data cells over to his own reporting mechanism on a monthly basis, ultimately wasting precious time.
Discovering TeamSupport’s Solution
Fed up with lackluster chat experiences, Graham immediately went to the Salesforce AppExchange and searched based on his team’s primary requirement, “website chat Salesforce integration.” Messaging & Live Chat, along with its native Salesforce integration, was one of the first listings to appear.
When Graham clicked through to the TeamSupport website, he began a conversation with Messaging & Live Chat solution consultant, Dan Mowinski. This initial discovery conversation, along with all subsequent interactions with the TeamSupport team, quelled any lingering doubts he held about switching chat providers.
Graham recalls another key requirement: “We were unable to get a custom experience through LivePerson.” The custom experience he was seeking included the ability to create a custom chat form (shown above) that incorporated AlienVault branding (logo, colors, etc) along with multiple custom data fields such as first name, last name, email, company, etc. With Messaging & Live Chat, he learned that this custom chat experience would be easy to implement, and it was “exactly what [he] wanted.”
After a full product demonstration (tailored to AlienVault’s specific use case and desired outcomes for chat) and a cost-benefit analysis, Graham was sold. And his company was, too. “We had a great roll-out. Dan was there every step of the way, every question was answered, my support issues were answered. I wasn’t in a queue, I didn’t have to wait in line, people picked up the phone.” This entirely new and refreshing customer experience played out in stark contrast to Graham’s previous disappointing experiences with other live chat providers.
“I’ve never worked with a better company than TeamSupport.”
During the implementation of Messaging & Live Chat on the AlienVault website, Graham and his team were able to tackle their third primary requirement for a live chat service. They needed to be able to silo off certain types of chats from one another (general sales vs. resellers).
With the multi-widget offering, they were able to create two unique widgets and install them on corresponding pages throughout the entire website. For Graham, this experience was “fantastic, and it was so easy to implement” compared to previous chat providers.
After installing TeamSupport’s Messaging & Live Chat on the product and pricing pages, the team quickly decided to install on over 47 technical solutions pages, the support resource center, and finally, the AlienVault homepage. Using multiple widgets and priority tiers, Graham was able to break down “the allocation of the chat behind the scenes” for a seamless end-user experience tailored to their complex product offering. Robust reporting and analytics made it easier than ever to tie data into Salesforce for a 360-degree view of chat performance and its impact on overarching sales goals.
The Results
It didn’t take long for AlienVault to experience results. “Quarter over quarter, [we’ve experienced] 80% growth. It’s unbelievable.” After TeamSupport’s Messaging & Live Chat was installed on the homepage for just a few months, their reactive chat-to-opportunity conversion rate increased to 30%, with the opportunity-to-deal rate at 15%. After they added proactive chat functionality to their setup, the proactive chat-to-opportunity conversion rate performed even better: averaging 46%, with the opportunity-to-deal rate at 17%.
To sum it up, “chat converts better than anything else” for AlienVault.
In order to further increase chat volume and conversion rates, the team enabled the Call Me feature so that interested prospects could immediately jump from a chat conversation to the phone to tackle more in-depth, technical conversations.
The team also used javascript variables to route proactive chats to the appropriate sales reps based on verticals, for a customized end-user experience. Using the Salesforce integration, all chat data and variables flow seamlessly into the Salesforce lead record after the chat ends, ensuring seamless follow up from AlienVault’s sales team.
AlienVault’s chat volume has tripled since implementation in 2014, and the team has fielded over 11K live chats since the adoption of TeamSupport live chat services. Chat volume has increased so much that they now hire dedicated chat reps to meet customer demand. Graham has taken steps to scale up the chat program and train new agent teams in chat etiquette and best practices, and even created a Messaging & Live Chat/AlienVault training guide for new sales agents.
Graham explains the driving reason for his success with Messaging & Live Chat best: “Chat puts you right in front of the visitor immediately. It opens a portal to create that instant dialogue between the visitor and the sales rep.” Messaging & Live Chat allows AlienVault site visitors to instantly receive accurate and quick answers about “exactly what [visitors are] looking for. It works to our advantage.”
As for Graham? “Messaging & Live Chat has made me look like a champ.”