NEW YORK, Oct. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN), a leading provider of conversational commerce solutions, today announced that it has acquired Conversable, a leading conversational intelligence platform focused on social and marketing use cases, with a speciality in conversational commerce for the quick service restaurant and hospitality industries. The acquisition brings additional AI, social listening and outbound messaging campaign management capabilities to LivePerson and its market-leading conversational commerce platform LiveEngage. Conversable's solutions have been adopted by household name brands across the hospitality, entertainment, tech and other industries. Conversable's AI and automation development teams will join LivePerson's global product and technology organization.

"Conversational commerce is about using AI and natural language – a conversation – to interact with a brand," said Robert LoCascio, CEO and founder of LivePerson. "Consumers do not want to download more apps or navigate websites to order ahead. They want to type, tap or voice order what they want from the messaging services they already enjoy. Conversable brings to LivePerson proven social and marketing capabilities that will enhance our conversational commerce solutions, along with a set of templates and integrations that accelerate bot development for common consumer requests, and commerce tasks like ordering ahead at restaurants. We are excited for their talented team to join our global product and technology organization and the work we've been doing on conversational commerce in telecommunications, financial services, retail, travel and automotive." 

More than forty percent of messaging conversations on LivePerson's LiveEngage platform already include some form of AI bot and automation. LiveEngage enables brands to connect with and create consumer experiences across SMS; popular messaging services such as Facebook Messenger; voice assistants; and a brand's own apps, website and phone systems. LiveEngage brings together the AI and automations necessary to operate these consumer experiences at scale, along with the backend integrations to offer capabilities such as payments and order status updates. A workspace for customer care and sales agents is provided to monitor and support the experience where automation does not. Rich analytics help brands understand the true voice of their customer and capitalize on unmet needs. 

"We are excited for Conversable to join LivePerson in taking conversational commerce to the mainstream market," adds Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Conversable. "Conversation is a transformative interface and an unprecedented opportunity. Businesses that get started early will have the most important advantage in the AI era: high-fidelity data to train machine learning models. In bringing together our companies, we are paving the way to intuitive and authentic brand conversations throughout the entire customer lifecycle, but the value doesn't stop there. These conversations arm businesses with a new level of customer understanding."

"Conversable has been an outstanding and innovative partner that has helped us chart new ways to better serve and understand our guests, using the messaging channels they love," said Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer for TGI Friday's. "We are very excited about the combined value and innovation that will stem from Conversable's industry expertise coupled with LivePerson's leading conversational AI platform for the enterprise."

The Conversable acquisition brings a suite of complementary tools for building and deploying both structured and unstructured conversations, as well as social listening and outbound campaign management capabilities. Conversable also brings an innovative integration with GM Onstar to facilitate in-car ordering and other brand engagements.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on LivePerson's results of operations for the full year ending Dec. 31, 2018.

About LivePerson, Inc. 
LivePerson makes life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands. Our 18,000 customers, including leading brands like Citibank, HSBC, Orange and The Home Depot, use our conversational commerce solutions to orchestrate humans and AI, at scale, and create a convenient, deeply personal relationship — a conversational relationship — with their millions of consumers. For more information about LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN), please visit www.liveperson.com.

About Conversable
Conversable is a leading conversational intelligence platform. We power the intersection of AI with messaging and voice. Our AI-driven platform helps brands reach their customers with automated experiences on all major messaging and voice applications. Global brands trust our technology to enable conversational commerce, resolve common customer requests, and deliver content on-demand to reach their customers where they are. Conversable was founded by Andrew Busey, CPO and Chairman, and Ben Lamm, CEO. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional offices in Dallas. To learn more, please visit www.conversable.com.

Safe Harbor Provision
Statements in this press release regarding LivePerson that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future events or results to differ materially from such statements.  Any such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to financial guidance, are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  It is routine for our internal projections and expectations to change as the quarter and year progress, and therefore it should be clearly understood that the internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations may change.  Although these expectations may change, we are under no obligation to inform you if they do.  Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements.  Some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein include, without limitation: potential fluctuations in our quarterly revenue and operating results; competition in the market for digital engagement technology; our ability to retain existing clients and attract new clients; potential adverse impact due to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; privacy concerns relating to the Internet that could result in new legislation or negative public perception; risks related to new regulatory or other legal requirements that could materially impact our business; our ability to effectively operate on mobile devices; failures or security breaches in our services, those of our third party providers, or in the websites of our customers; risks related to industry-specific regulation and unfavorable industry-specific laws, regulations or interpretive positions; the adverse effect that the global economic downturn may have on our business and results of operations; economic conditions and regulatory changes caused by the United Kingdom's likely exit from the European Union; our ability to retain key personnel, attract new personnel and to manage staff attrition; risks related to the ability to successfully integrate past or potential future acquisitions; additional regulatory requirements, tax liabilities, currency exchange rate fluctuations and other risks as we expand internationally and/or as we expand into direct-to-consumer services; risks related to the regulation or possible misappropriation of personal information belonging to our customers' Internet users; potential failure to meeting service level commitments to certain customers; risks related to protecting our intellectual property rights or potential infringement of the intellectual property rights of third parties; legal liability and/or negative publicity for the services provided to consumers via our technology platforms; technology systems beyond our control and technology-related defects that could disrupt the LivePerson services; errors, failures or "bugs" in our products may be difficult to correct; increased allowances for doubtful accounts as a result of an increasing amount of receivables due from customers with greater credit risk; payment-related risks; delays in our implementation cycles; impairments to goodwill that result in significant charges to earnings; risks associated with the recent volatility in the capital markets; our ability to secure additional financing to execute our business strategy; our ability to license necessary third party software for use in our products and services, and our ability to successfully integrate third party software; our ability to maintain our reputation; risks related to our recognition of revenue from subscriptions; our lengthy sales cycles; risks related to our operations in Israel, and the civil and political unrest in that region; changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States; risks associated with our current or any future stock repurchase programs, including whether such programs will enhance long-term stockholder value, and whether such stock repurchases could increase the volatility of the price of our common stock and diminish our cash reserves; natural catastrophic events and interruption to our business by man-made problems; the high volatility of our stock price; and risks related to our common stock being traded on more than one securities exchange. This list is intended to identify only certain of the principal factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in the forward-looking statements.  Readers are referred to the reports and documents filed from time to time by us with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of these and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in forward-looking statements.

MEDIA CONTACT
Allison Franzese
LivePerson
afranzese@liveperson.com
212-609-4224

SOURCE LivePerson, Inc.