Small Fredericton Start-up Sold To LiveOps – Telegraph Journal

By Chris Morris – Telegraph Journal | link to original article 

A small Fredericton company that developed technology to track online transactions, has sold out to California giant LiveOps in a deal that proves once again that New Brunswick can be a big player in the global IT sector.

UserEvents, a Fredericton startup whose technology alerts corporations when customers are having trouble with online transactions, was purchased this week by LiveOps, Inc., a corporate leader in cloud contact centre and customer service solutions.

LiveOps, based in Redwood City, Calif., announced the purchase in a statement but did not release the price. The company said only that the move comes after it completed a $33.3-million debt financing arrangement.

Jeff Thompson, CEO and co-founder of UserEvents, said on Tuesday all seven employees now will work for LiveOps in Fredericton, serving as a satellite office in the California company’s research and development network.

“We started UserEvents in 2012 and we started out with one goal in mind – to help large organizations better interact with their customers,” Thompson said in an interview.

“It’s all about customer retention and loyalty and the old adage that happy customers will be repeat customers and spend more.”

This marks the second exit for Thompson, who five years ago sold his company Conseros. That firm’s software improved the efficiency of large corporations’ back-office operations.

It’s also the second exit in three years for the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, which in 2011 made 28 times its money when Radian6 sold out to Salesforce. The foundation invested $250,000 in UserEvents in November 2012.

“This sale is great news for the region as a whole,” Thompson said about the LiveOps deal.

“It’s another feather in our cap and shows that we can do tremendous things from a small town in a small province on the world stage. It’s another example of the innovation that is happening here. It gives us very good exposure as a region where creative and innovative things are happening.”

Thompson said UserEvents developed enterprise software called CxEngage that allows large corporations or organizations to instantly detect clients who are having problems with their websites.

Before the client clicks off in a huff, CxEngage allows the corporation’s call centre to phone the customer, sort out the problem and use the engagement to make additional sales.

“It gives the brand real-time visibility to a customer’s online journey and the opportunity to engage in that journey,” Thompson said.

LiveOps said in a statement it would integrate the CxEngage contextual routing capabilities with its core platform and extend them to all LiveOps applications, including LiveOps Engage, LiveOps for Salesforce and custom applications built on top of LiveOps APIs.

“With this acquisition we are further challenging old ways of doing business,” said Marty Beard, chairman and CEO, LiveOps.

“It is no longer enough to measure customer satisfaction for each channel separately. Consumers shift between channels, and contact centres must adapt to better manage these fragmented interactions across voice, email, chat, social and SMS. By incorporating real-time, contextual routing and proactive customer engagement into the LiveOps Platform, we will provide a better experience across the entire customer journey.”

More than 300 companies around the world, including Salesforce.com, Symantec, Royal Mail Group, Ideal Living and Amway New Zealand, use LiveOps’ technology.