LiveVox Layoffs Hit Channel and Sales Team

Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn have seen the influx of ex-LiveVox employees posting about getting layoff notices in the past week. The cuts have come following the acquisition by contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) giant NICE.

It is unclear how widespread the layoffs are, but it appears to have impacted the company's channel partner leadership. 

This round of layoffs impacted LiveVox's national partner sales channel leader, Tom Issler, who said he said he didn't see it coming.

"How quickly things can change! With NICE acquiring LiveVox, I fell victim to a downsizing effort alongside many of my talented coworkers," he wrote on LinkedIn.

Issler said he was particularly surprised since 2023 was a record-breaking year for the firm — "a year that led to enthusiasm and a desire to continue growing with the company," he wrote.

All of this follows the October 2023 announcement that NICE would acquire LiveVox to strengthen its AI efforts in a deal that went final on Dec. 26. 

According to Elvis Picardo, partner at Luft Financial/senior portfolio manager at iA Private Wealth, mergers and acquisitions can have a "profound impact on a company's growth prospects and long-term outlook." 

Overpayment and culture clashes as companies navigate mergers are commonplace. The market might also react if investors feel the deal isn't suitable, causing harm to company stock in some instances. 

Related:Orca Security Layoffs Target Numerous Employees

Former Employees: LiveVox Layoffs Are 'Widespread'

Amanda Butkewich-Bahia is an employee impacted by LiveVox layoffs. She said last Tuesday she got a meeting invitation with the subject line "org updates." Then she received the news that they eliminated her role at the company.

Amanda Butkewich-Bahia

"I was on a team of roughly 40 in the marketing department. Only three survived this round of layoffs," Butkewich-Bahia told Channel Futures.

She further shared that layoffs were widespread throughout the company. That includes the company's chief marketing officer, she said.

LiveVox's engineering team had 22 employees. Only nine associates retained employment with the now-merged company, Butkewich-Bahia told Channel Futures.

"They are using the product team because there is a release soon, and they (NICE) needed them to handle that," she maintains.

"Everything was quite tight-lipped," Butkewich-Bahia, the former senior content and product marketing manager, added.

Having spent four-and-a-half years at LiveVox, Butkewich-Bahia said she will get one month of compensation as severance.

Post-Acquisition Layoffs Invariably Probable 

Related:Xerox Layoffs Impact More than 3,000 Workers

Following mergers and acquisitions, there is typically a period of actually merging those teams to see which positions work and those that don't. During that time, the decision is made to eliminate positions seen as redundant or ones deemed relevant no more.

As such, we often hear about layoffs after mergers and acquisitions occur. Most recently, multinational semiconductor and infrastructure designer Broadcom acquired VMWare and put that on full display. Today, the number of layoffs resides at more than 2,900.

In 2023, communications-platform-as-a-service provider Twilio laid off 5% of its workforce, or some 300 employees. Although not directly tied to an acquisition, it does showcase a pattern of layoffs over the past year by companies in the unified communications and collaboration industry, with companies like Cisco also letting go of their fair share of workers last year.

We reached out to NICE for comment on the company's recent round of layoffs, and they had not responded by the time of publication. This is a developing story; stay tuned for updates.