Small-cap technology company LivePerson (NASDAQ:LPSN) burst out of obscurity and onto the scene in early May 2020 after the conversational commerce company reported strong first quarter numbers, causing LPSN stock to pop more than 40% in a day. LivePerson optimizes campaign outcomes for sales and service transactions by combining website visitor data with other historical, behavioral, and operational information to develop insights into each step of a consumer’s journey. Of course, it’s one thing offering these customer service channels, but the quality of service is all important. As stated in its Credo, The Ritz-Carlton aims to take service to the next level by addressing unexpressed wishes. And so that kind of forms a soft, lower bound for the level of volume we would expect that we could actually transform from voice to messaging if we owned, end-to-end, the voice and the messaging operations. We present non-GAAP financial information because we believe that it is helpful to some investors as one measure of our operations. I think interesting dynamic to see that you are actually taking over some of the voice operations. I think when my parents my dad got transferred, he was blue-collar.
So, it’s just a group we have got to get focused on and not have them drift up-market with the demand we are seeing in the enterprise. So, it’s obviously how you compensate the types of reps, you hire a younger group of reps. So, we already had, we have a team that’s focused on that area. Brown said, “It is a privilege to be asked to lead Upwork and a team for which I have great admiration. It’s just really team. With a constant digital connection at their fingertips, younger consumers expect a high threshold of digital convenience when seeking help from a brand. Connecting businesses and experts with consumers seeking help on the Web, LivePerson’s hosted software platform creates more relevant, compelling and personalized online experiences. Rob, on the Gainshare business, why is it you think consumers are gravitating to that over a non-Gainshare model? And from a tactical perspective, just to kind of frame the strategy near-term, if we look at the performance of our IVR deflection that exists today, we see that 30% to 50% of those consumers who are already in the IVR opt to exit and message. Two categories are kind of areas I wanted to focus on, if I could.
Product Features& Pricing Focus on the right prospects: LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you find the right prospects, fast. You have to leverage your network, search Linkedin and start “dialing for dollars”. This is a good opportunity to transition to guidance: focusing first on the specificities and timing of our investment profile and second, on its return and contribution to our ramping growth rate and operating leverage during 2019 and into 2020. First, with respect to investment, our plan is to increase sales capacity by 90% in 2019. In order to maximize in-year productivity, hiring will be heavily weighted towards the first and second quarters and is anticipated to be allocated as follows. And the brands are like, we don’t want to increase headcount, but there is that friction. It’s about commerce, it’s about the brand being able to build their own consumer experiences that are very on-brand versus like an Amazon Alexa.
The model currently being examined has employees all working from home with the company providing a budget for co-working space rental in various locations. The solution is to ban any algorithm from being patentable. And I think John in his commentary hinted toward maybe even an AI-enabled voice solution in this coming year. And then we have some additional hosting expenses tied to the public cloud migration that, again, will be temporary, but impacted the quarter and will impact the year. As soon as I did, that, more entrepreneurs started to reach out to me and contact me ones I didn’t know who weren’t my friends. So my credit cards were gone; I didn’t have any money. And so I think you’ll see a different dynamic in the market as we — and we’re investing a lot of money in this. So, we are actually running voice cloud platforms, and that gives us a lot of I think preparedness for what we will deliver on the voice side because we are working on a voice automation offering.