Aside from the financial considerations, the founders of Fredericton-based UserEvents decided to sell out to LiveOps, Inc. this week because they discovered an alignment of ambition and vision for the two companies.

UserEvents, a Fredericton startup whose technology alerts corporations when customers are having trouble with online transactions, announced Tuesday that it would be bought for an undisclosed sum by the Redwood City, Calif.-based provider of cloud contact center and customer service solutions. Though financial details were not released, LiveOps did say earlier the move comes after it completed a US$30 million debt financing – or C$33.3 million at the current exchange rate.

The sale marks the second exit for UserEvent CEO and Co-Founder Jeff Thompson, who five years ago sold his company Conseros, whose software improved the efficiency of large corporations’ back-office operations.  It is also the second exit in three years for the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, which invested $250,000 in UserEvents in November 2012. The Foundation in 2011 made 28 times its money when Radian6 sold out to Salesforce.

In an interview Monday night, Thompson said he and the other shareholders decided it was time to sell because they found that LiveOps would help the company realize their vision of developing a data-based system to improve customer relations for large companies.

“It came down to the fact that we had a shared vision at UserEvents from the time we started the company, and it was surprisingly aligned with LiveOps’,” said Thompson. “Alignment and vision go a long way to getting things done.”

UserEvents’ main product is enterprise software called CxEngage, which allows large corporations or organizations to instantly detect clients who are having problems with their website or other communications channel. Before the client gets frustrated and goes away, CxEngage notifies the corporation’s call centre to phone the customer, sort out the problem and use the engagement to make additional sales. At the very least, customers are left with the impression that the company responds to their needs, so the experience cements loyalty and therefore increases sales.

LiveOps now plans to integrate the CxEngage contextual routing capabilities into 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.

UserEvents, which has seven employees in Fredericton, will now become a LiveOps R&D facility designated for Big Data-driven technologies. As well as helping to grow the LiveOps team in the region, it will give impetus to the drive to establish a Big Data centre of excellence in New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada.

“We really are going to be a key part of their contextual routing platform,” said Thompson.

The buyer said the UserEvents acquisition brings rich engineering talent to LiveOps, and the UserEvents staff will join LiveOps immediately.

When asked how the team will grow in Fredericton, Thompson it would continue to grow and he would be involved in “the second chapter of UserEvents, if you will.”

He paused for a moment, then added: “Stay tuned.”