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LivePerson votes tomorrow. Most AI support projects still don't pay.

LivePerson stockholders vote Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern on the SoundHound deal.

The meeting is a webcast. Approval needs a majority of all outstanding shares, not just the ones that show up. A skipped vote counts the same as no. Internet and phone proxies close tonight at 11:59 p.m. ET.

LivePerson and SoundHound signed the merger agreement on 2 July. LivePerson's 18 Aug reminder says ISS and Glass Lewis recommend yes. It also says outstanding debt is larger than the deal, and that secured noteholders agreed to swap notes at a discount to about $350 million par. US holders would get SoundHound stock the company valued at about $3.33 a share as of the 21 Apr announcement, a 22% premium to the 30-day VWAP before that date. TASE holders would get cash of similar value. That is LivePerson's telling. The S-4 and proxy are on the SEC site.

If the vote fails, the same filing warns about Nasdaq delisting risk and debt covenants. We will update the LivePerson page after the meeting.

Salesforce still has to close Fin

The other big CX deal this year is not done. Salesforce signed on 15 June to buy Fin (the Intercom rebrand from May) for about $3.6 billion. Close is slated for Salesforce fiscal Q4 2027, with regulators still in the way.

CMSWire put Fin at 30,000 companies. Fin's own 76% "resolved without a person" figure is a vendor number. Treat it that way.

Fin also put Operator into general availability. CX Today reported on 10 Aug that Fin says customers made more than 20,000 changes in three months: over 10,000 settings edits, over 4,300 help articles written or changed, and over 3,500 workflow updates. Again, Fin's count.

Pages: Fin, Intercom, Salesforce Service Cloud.

A quarter of AI service projects pay

Gartner reviewed 432 customer-service AI use cases. CX Dive summarized it last month: a quarter show a return, a quarter lose money, 42% have ROI the team cannot state, 11% break even.

Teams run almost five AI use cases on average and put about 13% of the function budget into AI. More than three-quarters of leaders still plan to spend more on AI in 2026. 56% expect their own pay to be tied to AI results this year.

Julie Geller at Info-Tech, quoted in that piece: too many rollouts start because the board wants an AI story, not because someone named a customer problem. Containment is easy to report. Resolution is the thing customers notice.

Also this week

Talkdesk launched Talkdesk for Financial Centers on 18 Aug. It is a branch plus contact-center package on the existing CXA platform. Talkdesk.

Zoom said IDC named it a Leader in the 2026 MarketScape for agentic CCaaS (doc US54117326, August 2026). Zoom.

Zendesk's August help-center notes add live call transcription (Contact Center with Amazon Contact Lens), better transfer screens, and auto-accept after about two seconds. Zendesk.

Sources

  • LivePerson 18 Aug stockholder reminder: PR Newswire
  • LivePerson DEFA14A filing (meeting 20 Aug 2026, 10:00 a.m. ET): SEC EDGAR
  • LivePerson/SoundHound proxy and S-4: SEC EDGAR
  • CMSWire on Salesforce-Fin deal (15 Jun 2026): CMSWire
  • CX Today on Fin Operator (10 Aug 2026): CX Today
  • CX Dive on Gartner AI ROI study: Customer Experience Dive
  • Talkdesk Financial Centers launch (18 Aug 2026): Talkdesk
  • Zoom IDC MarketScape (18 Aug 2026): Zoom
  • Zendesk August 2026 updates: Zendesk Support