LivePerson showcased at Facebook's F8 conference as a platform for large enterprises building customer service bots on Facebook Messenger

NEW YORK, April 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LivePerson, Inc. (Nasdaq: LPSN), a leading provider of cloud mobile and online business messaging solutions, was showcased as a platform for Facebook Messenger integrations at Facebook's annual F8 Conference. As the only large enterprise-focused provider highlighted on stage, LivePerson boasts the unique capability of scaling and managing bots for large brands, rolling out the first "hybrid bots" model for Facebook Messenger at enterprise scale. Humans and bots team up in one conversation, assisting consumers in customer service queries as well as in purchasing decisions.

The LivePerson LiveEngage platform currently powers a number of brand chatbots via Facebook Messenger, including some of those highlighted on stage at F8, as well as the Kia Nirobot, the first bot to be featured in a Super Bowl commercial. LiveEngage is the first platform to blend humans and bots seamlessly into a single conversation thread and empower brands with the same broad capabilities for managing and measuring bots that they already have for human agents.

"We are working with many large brands to deploy messaging at scale, in Facebook Messenger, and are delighted to be recognized by Facebook for that," says Rob LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson. "The future of customer care and digital is seamlessly blending bots and humans to give the consumer a great experience, and Facebook has been a visionary in pushing the bots paradigm. The combination of Facebook Messenger and LivePerson, which provides the LiveEngage platform for managing bots and humans together, at scale, is great news both for brands and their consumers."

LivePerson's hybrid bot technology works by managing bots as agents, effectively passing conversations between humans and bots — in what we call a "tango" of humans and AI. This allows bots to handle routine, administrative tasks, while the company's human staff takes on the more complex, meaningful interactions and ensures customers are being understood. Both sides also get to see the history of the conversation, a major benefit of messaging, so there is no need to re-explain questions or issues after a conversation is handed from a bot agent to a human agent. This "tango" technology is already being implemented by major brands in telecoms and banking.

"Facebook is taking the hype surrounding bots and shifting it, using bots in a smart and thoughtful way to focus on practical use cases," says Rurik Bradbury, Head of Research at LivePerson. "To get the most from Facebook's 'Yellow Pages of messengers' idea, brands need tools to continually track, measure and iterate on bots usage and capability, and hand over tasks to a human when necessary. Brands need to supplement bots with human support, and blend those seamlessly."

LivePerson created the first web chat software for the customer service category in the 1990s. With the world's largest data set of customer–brand text interactions and billions of messages exchanged, LivePerson has the raw "fuel" that bot and AI systems need to be successful along with the connection to back-end digital and care operations necessary to manage and measure them.

About LivePerson
LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) is the leading provider of mobile and online messaging business solutions, enabling a meaningful connection between brands and consumers. LiveEngage, the Company's enterprise-class, cloud-based platform, empowers consumers to stop wasting time on hold with 1-800 numbers, and instead message their favorite brands, just as they do with friends and family. More than 18,000 businesses, including Adobe, Citibank, HSBC, EE, IBM, L'Oréal, PNC, The Home Depot, and T-Mobile, rely on the unparalleled intelligence, security, and scalability of LiveEngage to reduce costs, increase lifetime value, and create meaningful connections with consumers. For more information, please visit www.liveperson.com. To view other global press releases about LivePerson, please visit pr.liveperson.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 markets for digital engagement technology, and web and mobile based consumer-facing services, and online consumer services; 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; responding to rapid technological change and changing client preferences; 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; impairments to goodwill that result in significant charges to earnings; the adverse effect that the global economic downturn may have on our business and results of operations; 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; our ability to expand our operations internationally; failures or security breaches in our services, those of our third party providers, or in the websites of our customers; 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; technology systems beyond our control and technology-related defects that could disrupt the LivePerson services; 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; risks related to technological or other defects disrupting our 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; risks associated with the recent volatility in the capital markets; our ability to secure additional financing to execute our business strategy; 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; our ability to license necessary third party software for use in our products and services, and our ability to successfully integrate third party software; changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States; 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; 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
afranzese@liveperson.com

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SOURCE LivePerson, Inc.