Case Study: LiveNOW

LIVENow was set up to help people access live events — from sports and fitness to music and theatre. When COVID-19 hit, live events like concerts and festivals ground to a halt. But the public were still looking for ways to consume the live content that they no longer could in person.

LIVENow saw this gap in the music industry and quickly went about making the switch to live streaming music, offering consumers content that they could access on a pay-per-view or subscription basis. But as with any new venture, challenges arose that needed to be solved.

The problem: A time-sensitive operation with variable customer service demand

In late November 2020, LIVENow were hosting a live-streamed concert for the GRAMMY Award-winning artist Dua Lipa. The stream was pay-per-view, so the audience could buy tickets and get a direct link to the stream. Being a new business, this was the biggest event to date LIVENow had hosted, so they weren’t sure what to expect. Making this switch to online meant dealing with new customer service demands — including increased queries and more ticket orders.

They only had a limited number of customer service agents managing ticket sales and customer service enquiries through Zendesk, but the massive demand for this live stream meant that wouldn’t be enough. Due to the scale of the event, they knew there would be higher levels of enquiries linked to the concert than they had experienced before, but that afterwards their day-to-day customer demand didn’t justify bringing on any more full-time customer service agents.

We expected Dua Lipa was going to generate a lot of interest, but we weren’t sure if an online event would have the same level of demand as a live performance. As a result, we couldn’t anticipate all of the customer service needs that would arise from this event. Luckily, we had come across Odondo online and saw that they could provide a rapid set up and the flexibility we were after.”

Although they were unsure on the volume, LIVENow anticipated they would need more customer service agents nearer the time of the stream, as sales became more time-sensitive in addition to customers making enquiries about accessing the link. It was clear that this was a project that required supplementary customer service resources along with the flexibility to scale up and down as demand changed.

 

The solution: An efficient and flexible customer service provider

LIVENow contacted Odondo a few days ahead of the event to see whether they could outsource their customer service needs to them. This involved a four-day campaign, consisting of four different streams based in different time zones, meaning a 24/7 hour outsourced customer service team was needed to address various queries and needs from across the globe. Odondo provided this in the form of 19 individual agents over the course of the event based on LIVENow’s set budget.

 

“We didn’t know what this project would be like, so we needed a quick turnaround, which is what attracted us towards Odondo. They were quick to adapt and their customer service agents were responsive to what we wanted. Their team provided quality outcomes and ensured our customer service offering was reactive and efficient.”

With the tight turnaround, training started just a day before the event but Odondo’s agents were able to take on the task load and learn quickly. There were 96 consecutive hours of people signing up to the event and more agents were needed as the flow of ticket demand increased. At one point, 1000 tickets had been bought in an hour, which would have been unmanageable by the original customer service team. Odondo was able to provide agent overflow, meaning LIVENow could scale up and down as necessary in line with demand. Up to eight agents were being used at peak times to help manage the increased enquiries from customers that occurred an hour before the stream.

This level of flexibility ensured that LIVENow could be ready for anything during this new experimental project. With Odondo’s help, LIVENow were able to trial a new commercial opportunity without committing to ongoing costs — all while ensuring they matched demand with capacity.

The results: A successful experiment and a repeatable operation

 
The massive variability in customer service demand inherent to hosting live-streamed events meant that LIVENow had to get this right — and Odondo delivered. What started as an experiment for LIVENow to help adapt to lockdown became a new stream of revenue. Odondo provided LIVENow with the ability to scale up and down customer service agents on-demand. Odondo’s rapid set up, flexibility and limited commitment requirements meant that LIVENow could deliver the quality customer experience they needed to their customers.

LIVENow were able to know with certainty that they could replicate the results — and they did! The following month included further live-streamed music events, such as Pete Tong and The Gorillaz. Because LIVENow had such a profitable and successful operation with Odondo’s flexible customer service, the trust was there to deliver those same results again.

“We are so glad this new project went well — there were so many unknowns and we wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without Odondo.”

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