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Description of Business and Basis of Presentation
6 Months Ended
Jun. 30, 2020
Accounting Policies [Abstract]  
Description of Business and Basis of Presentation
Description of Business and Basis of Presentation
LivePerson, Inc. (the “Company” or “LivePerson”) makes life easier for people and brands everywhere through messaging powered by AI and humans. During the past decade, the consumers have made the mobile device the center of their digital lives, and they have made mobile messaging the center of communication with friends, family and peers. The Company’s technology enables consumers to connect with businesses through these same preferred conversational interfaces, including Facebook Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Google Rich Business Messenger and Alexa. These messaging conversations harness human agents, bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to power convenient, personalized and content-rich journeys across the entire consumer lifecycle, from discovery and research, to sales, service and support, and even marketing, social and brick and mortar engagements. For example, consumers can look up product info like ratings, images and pricing, search for stores, see product inventory, schedule appointments, apply for credit, approve repairs, make purchases or payments - all without ever leaving the messaging channel. These AI and human-assisted conversational experiences constitute the Conversational Space.
LiveEngage, the Company’s enterprise-class cloud-based platform, enables businesses to become conversational by securely deploying messaging, coupled with bots and AI, at scale for brands with tens of millions of customers and many thousands of customer care agents. LiveEngage powers conversations across each of a brand’s primary digital channels, including mobile apps, mobile and desktop web browsers, short message service (SMS), social media and third-party consumer messaging platforms. Brands can also use LiveEngage to message consumers when they dial a 1-800 number instead of forcing them to navigate interactive voice response systems (IVRs) and wait on hold. Similarly, LiveEngage can receive traditional emails and convert them into messaging conversations, or embed messaging conversations directly into web advertisements, rather than redirect consumers to static website landing pages.
LivePerson's robust, cloud-based suite of rich messaging, real-time chat, AI and automation offerings features consumer and agent facing bots, intelligent routing and capacity mapping, real-time intent detection and analysis, queue prioritization, customer sentiment, analytics and reporting, content delivery, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, cobrowsing and a sophisticated proactive targeting engine. With LiveEngage, agents can manage all conversations with consumers through a single console interface, regardless of which disparate messaging endpoints the consumers originate from -- i.e., WhatsApp, Line, Apple Business Chat, IVR, social, email, Alexa, or WeChat. An extensible application programming interface (API) stack facilitates a lower cost of ownership by facilitating robust integration into back-end systems, as well as enabling developers to build their own programs and services on top of the platform. More than 40 APIs and software development kits are available on LiveEngage.
LivePerson’s Conversational AI offerings put the power of bot development, training, management and analysis into the hands of the contact center and its agents, the teams most familiar with how to structure sales and service conversations to drive successful outcomes. The platform enables what we call “the tango” of humans, AI and bots, whereby human agents act as bot managers, overseeing AI-powered conversations and seamlessly stepping into the flow when a personal touch is needed. Agents become ultra-efficient, leveraging the AI engine to serve up relevant content, define next-best actions and take over repetitive transactional work, so that the agent can focus on relationship building. By seamlessly integrating messaging with the Company’s proprietary Conversational AI, as well as third-party bots, LiveEngage offers brands a comprehensive approach to scaling automations across their millions of customer conversations.
Complementing the Company’s proprietary messaging and Conversational AI offerings are teams of technical, solutions and consulting professionals that have developed deep domain expertise in the implementation and optimization of conversational services across industries and messaging endpoints. LivePerson is a leading authority in the Conversational Space. LivePerson’s products, coupled with the Company’s domain knowledge, industry expertise and professional services, have been proven to maximize the effectiveness of the Conversational Space and deliver measurable return on investment. Certain of the Company’s customers have achieved the following advantages from the Company’s offerings:
the ability for each agent to manage as many as 40 messaging conversations at a time, as compared to one at a time for a voice agent and two to four at a time for a good chat agent. Adding AI and bots provides even greater scale to the number of conversations managed;
labor efficiency gains of at least two times that of a voice agents, effectively cutting labor costs by at least 50%;
improving the overall customer experience, thereby fueling customer satisfaction increases of up to 20 percentage points, and enhancing retention and loyalty;
more convenient, personalized and content-rich conversations that increase sales conversion by up to 20%, increase average order value and reduce abandonment;
more satisfied contact center agents, thereby reducing agent churn by up to 50%
maintain a valued connection with consumers via mobile devices, either through native applications, websites, text messages, or third-party messaging platforms;
leverage spending that drives visitor traffic by increasing visitor conversions;
refine and improve performance by understanding which initiatives deliver the highest rate of return; and
increase lead generation by providing a single platform that engages consumers through advertisements and listings on branded and third-party websites.
    
As a “cloud computing” or software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, LivePerson provides solutions on a hosted basis. This model offers significant benefits over premise-based software, including lower up-front costs, faster implementation, lower total cost of ownership, scalability, cost predictability, and simplified upgrades. Organizations that adopt a fully-hosted, multi-tenant architecture that is maintained by LivePerson eliminate the majority of the time, server infrastructure costs, and IT resources required to implement, maintain, and support traditional on-premise software.
More than 18,000 businesses, including HSBC, Orange, The Home Depot, and GM Financial use our conversational solutions to orchestrate humans and AI, at scale, and create a convenient, deeply personal relationship with their customers.

LivePerson's consumer services offering is an online marketplace that connects independent service providers (Experts) who provide information and knowledge for a fee via mobile and online messaging with individual consumers (Users). Users seek assistance and advice in various categories including personal counseling and coaching, computers and programming, education and tutoring, spirituality and religion, and other topics.
LivePerson was incorporated in the State of Delaware in November 1995 and the LivePerson service was introduced in November 1998. In April 2000, the Company completed an initial public offering and is currently traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. LivePerson is headquartered in New York City with U.S. offices in Alpharetta (Georgia), San Francisco (California), Mountain View (California), Tampa (Florida) and Seattle (Washington), and international offices in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Berlin (Germany), Delhi (India), London (United Kingdom), Mannheim (Germany), Melbourne (Australia), Sydney (Australia), Milan (Italy), Paris (France), Ra'anana (Israel), Reading (United Kingdom), Singapore (Singapore), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Tokyo (Japan).

Basis of Presentation
The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements as of June 30, 2020 and for the three and six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2019 are unaudited. In the opinion of management, the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared on the same basis as the annual financial statements and reflect all adjustments, which include only normal recurring adjustments, necessary to present fairly the consolidated financial position of LivePerson as of June 30, 2020, and the consolidated results of operations, comprehensive loss and cash flows for the interim periods ended June 30, 2020 and 2019. The financial data and other information disclosed in these notes to the condensed consolidated financial statements related to these periods are unaudited. The results of operations for any interim period are not necessarily indicative of the results of operations for any other future interim period or for a full fiscal year. The condensed consolidated balance sheet at December 31, 2019 has been derived from audited consolidated financial statements at that date.
Certain information and note disclosures normally included in financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”) have been condensed or omitted pursuant to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). These unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements should be read in conjunction with the Company’s audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto for the year ended December 31, 2019 included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 2, 2020.
Principles of Consolidation
The condensed consolidated financial statements include the Company and its wholly-owned subsidiaries. All intercompany balances and transactions have been eliminated.
Use of Estimates
The preparation of the Company’s condensed consolidated financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the condensed consolidated financial statements and the reported amounts of income and expenses during the reporting period. These estimates are based on information available as of the date of the condensed consolidated financial statements; therefore, actual results could differ from management’s estimates.
Many of our estimates require increased judgment due to the significant volatility, uncertainty and economic disruption of the recent global novel coronavirus disease ("COVID-19") pandemic. We will continue to monitor the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our estimates and judgments may change materially as new events occur or additional information becomes available to us.
Recently Issued Accounting Standards    
In December 2019, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued ASU 2019-12, "Income Taxes (Topic 740): Simplifying the Accounting for Income Taxes." The new guidance is intended to simplify the accounting for income taxes by removing certain exceptions and by updating accounting requirements around franchise taxes, goodwill recognized for tax purposes, the allocation of current and deferred tax expense among legal entities, among other minor changes. The ASU is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2020, including interim periods within those fiscal years. Early adoption is permitted. The Company is assessing what impact ASU 2019-12 will have on its condensed consolidated financial statements.

Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements
In June 2016, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update ASU 2016-13, "Financial Instruments-Credit Losses (Topic 326)", in order to improve financial reporting of expected credit losses on financial instruments and other commitments to extend credit. ASU 2016-13 requires that an entity measure and recognize expected credit losses for financial assets held at amortized cost and replaces the incurred loss impairment methodology in prior GAAP with a methodology that requires consideration of a broader range of information to estimate credit losses. Such required disclosures include, but are not limited to, the Company's methodology for estimating its allowance for credit losses. The Company adopted ASU 2016-13 effective January 1, 2020 and applied the guidance using a modified retrospective approach requiring that the Company recognize the cumulative effect of initially applying the impairment standard as an adjustment to opening accumulated deficit for the incremental increase in its allowance for credit losses as of January 1, 2020 over its allowance for bad debts as of December, 31, 2019, which amounted to $0.7 million. The Company will continue to actively monitor the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on expected credit losses.
    
In January 2017, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update ASU 2017-04, Simplifying the Test for Goodwill Impairment, which eliminates the computation of the implied fair value of goodwill to measure a goodwill impairment charge. Instead, entities will record a goodwill impairment charge based on the excess of a reporting unit’s carrying amount over its fair value. The guidance is effective for interim and annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2019, with early adoption permitted. The Company adopted ASU 2017-04 in the first quarter of 2020 which reduced the complexity surrounding the evaluation of goodwill for impairment. The adoption of this guidance did not have a material impact on the Company’s condensed consolidated financial statements.

In August 2018, the FASB issued ASU 2018-15, “Customer’s Accounting for Implementation Costs Incurred in a Cloud Computing Arrangement That Is a Service Contract,” which clarifies the accounting for implementation costs in cloud computing arrangements. The new standard aligns the treatment of implementation costs incurred by customers in cloud computing arrangements that are service contracts with the treatment of similar costs incurred to develop or obtain internal-use software. Under the new standard, implementation costs are deferred and presented in the same financial statement caption on the condensed consolidated balance sheet as a prepayment of related arrangement fees. The deferred costs are recognized over the term of the arrangement in the same financial statement caption in the condensed consolidated income statement as the related fees of the arrangement. The Company adopted ASU 2018-15 in the first quarter of 2020 and the impact of the adoption was not material to the Company's condensed consolidated financial statements.