LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:†LPSN), a leading provider of conversational commerce solutions, has announced that it has acquired Conversable, a leading conversational intelligence platform focused on social and marketing use cases, with a specialty 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 automation 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.
