Businessweek Extra - Rob LoCascio

a while. Obviously their business has changed a lot in the pandemic. As we think about customer service, we think about changing customer behavior. But then we sort of took it down level in some ways because we started to talk about his background as a lifelong New Yorker, as an entrepreneur who has been very involved in the New York scene, and also what he's done as a philanthropist and someone who's really given a lot back to the

New York community. Check it out. You know, we build platforms to allow consumers to communicate with their favorite brands, and you know the contact center is which normally would handle these communications, have been shut down because of social distancing, and you know, I've always been we we've been providing messaging platforms in AI, not voice platforms, like the eight hundred numbers were against that, and the voice contact centers really got shut down and there's been a real issue

with getting through the brands and getting your phone calls answered, and it's gotten worse than it ever has. And so we've just seen this massive shift into our platform and uh, you know, it's just it's been a real ride over the last couple of weeks, so the last couple of months actually, Yeah, And so you know it's interesting, Rob because you guys have such a widow into sort of

human behavior, I guess, and we're all wondering. You know, we were talking, uh during one of our local fills earlier in the show for our New York audience about you know, Wall Street interns and how they're having to sort of adjust the way that they deal with there would be bosses because they're you know, having to set up zoom calls instead of you know, being those eager beaver go getters who are like fetching lunch and doing

all that stuff that interns do in normal times. I do wonder, you know, like how have you seen people's behavior change. Look, it's it's the Context Center REPS is fifteen million of them around the world. We're sent home and normally they're in these you know, fixed locations, sitting two feet from each other. And now they're taking phone calls in their home while they have kids running around and you know, just dealing with the stresses of that

and it's not working out that well. So you know, I think the stress on this group of people and is really tough. Now once again, the alternative is what we're providing them as a way to become bobmakers and create automations and and and really jump into the digital world because that's the world that's growing, uh and and really scaling, versus sitting there and trying to handle fall and calls while you're in your home with some angry customer screaming at you. And now in your home, I mean,

they got to take the work home. It doesn't make sense. So there's really an opportunity here to kind of change how they work and get them into the future or

they're gonna lose their jobs. This is really what I think that the challenges for them right now with they're facing well so give us I don't know how specific you can get because you work with a lot of you know, certainly well known brands, But give us a for instance that you know, um, maybe how a brand has kind of tapped into what you're doing, especially in

the specific environment that we're in. Yeah. So you know, Chapoult is one of our one of our customers and and uh, obviously going into a store and picking ingredients and building a burrito you may or may not want to really do that right now with the challenges and virus. So we built with them an automation. It's called Pepper, and through Facebook, Messenger or SMS, you can you can you can converse with Pepper, and Pepper helps you build your burrito and then you show up at the store

and they hand it to you. You don't have to come in, they just hand it to you. So there's that going on right now. We were seeing massive amounts of interest in demand in the retail well because they've been turned upside down. How do you get a consumer engage when they don't feel comfortable coming in a store and and that's really where we see have them talk

to an automation. Uh, you know, do curbside delivery. Um that that's a whole different thing because retail is not going to go under, It just is going to shift into something different, which is gonna be powered by AI and automation. We talked to us a little bit more about that shift, because I think we do, you know, Jason, I were talking earlier just about kind of the real estate story of of retail, because they're certainly seeing it in New York City as more retailers are shutting down.

Not a new story, but I do wonder, you know how much in times of crisis we see transformations. So what else happens to the retail environment that might feel new or will feel new soon, but we'll soon become also the norm. Look in China right now, and we're actually launching platform in a couple of weeks. That's in China, they do streaming shopping. Some of the most popular biggest

services are streaming shopping. And this is really people in their homes with products, and like someone's trying on address and there are people in real time and video asking questions and messaging in and this person is trying on something to say, try that other address on do this, and and so you can imagine a world in which you have people that are are trying things on, they're they're explaining the products that you want to buy, and and by video you can go ahead and engage and

you can message them also. And it could be one too many, but but that I think is going to happen because we can solve we were right now. I'm working with one of the large home improvement companies were virtualizing a store as and when you walk in, you don't have to find a sales rep. Next to every product is a QR code. You basically start messaging. You can talk to an automation or a human who's not in the store, and you can ask questions. We we

and solve that problem. The issue is walking in the store, right And I think when we look at um, you know, how do you get people set don't bump into each other? So I think that we'll see what's streaming shopping. And I said, we're releasing a platform very shortly to go

after this. I think that's gonna be a way for you to release, engage and ask questions in your home and then you'll be able to buy or do a curbside picked up and or you know, and I think that's that's really where the future is going to be. Later on this hour, we're gonna take you to Washington for briefing from the President uh a coronavirus briefing, and as Carol mentioned earlier, often much more especially given everything that's going on in the world. Let's get back in

the meantime to our conversation with Robotcatio. He is founder and CEO of Live Person. He joins us on the phone from Connecticut, and Rob, I want to take this in a slightly different direction if I can, because knowing a bit about your background, you've been incredibly involved in the New York City startups scene and understanding sort of

what drives entrepreneurship, especially in New York City. There are a lot of big, kind of existential concerns right now about New York City, rightly or wrongly, something they're overblown, something that we're underestimating the impact that everything that we're going through could have a New York City. What's your take.

I mean, I think there's gonna be some major challenges, and it starts with this is that, like we decided a few weeks ago that we will not be returning to our offices, and our corporate headquarters is in New York City. Although we have fourteen offices around the world and at about employees, only about fifty or in New York.

But we decided as a company not to go back to offices and because they're not safe and and I know I've talked to many other CEO who are friends of mine in New York City and they're thinking, you know, we can't force our employees back. Plus, we're doing very well. You know, we had our best quarter in our history this path quarters. So we're all doing very well. If you're in tech and and you're part of the shift, and that's happening in the world. So here's what I

think it's gonna have. People are gonna move out. I mean, I'm seeing now some of our employees are like, look, if if I'm not working in New York, I'm not going to be in a small apartment. And I think, you know, people are gonna start to leave. And I don't think it's just tech. Um, it's gonna be other

industries because it's very expensive to work in New York. Um. You know, it does have a great lifestyle if you can actually engage with people, and so I think for especially our younger employees, UM, I think they're gonna tend to want to go someplace else. And so, um I think this will have an impact, especially in the startup world, because people may go other places to go start businesses because New York, once again, it's not the the cheapest place to to start a business. I started there. I

slept on a couch for two years. Now. That was back twenty five years ago. It was cheap. It was cheap to do that. Now it's not. You can't sleep in a couch in New York City down Tribeca. That's what I did, and I paid for bucks a month. You're not going to do that anymore. So I think it's a little hard to be a startup in New York. So Rob, when you say we decided you're not going to go back to your New York offices at all, you're done all off no globally, not just New York,

but all offices now, we're done. Wow. So so is it hybrid or is it everybody working at home? You're just going to continue that or you'll get offices outside major cities. We don't. We're gonna We're gonna push the We spend ten to twelve million a year on rent, and a landlords cannot cannot make the offices safe. I mean I went back to New York and I looked at our office. I mean, it's a joke to think that four people can be in an elevator and they're

trying to space. It just doesn't make sense, and they're not doing the work to make them safe. I'd rather take that money, push it down to my employees and say you figure out what to do. And what's happening now is some of them want to get together for a couple of months. Six of them will get together and get some space, maybe a we work or something else, but we will not be committing to fixed office space.

Things are working really well right now for us. And you know, it's not about working from home or remote. It's about giving people the flexibility to work the way they think they can at the best they can be. And even for me, like I don't miss the office a percent. I miss seeing people, and I do visit people and I'll take a nature walk with my some of my my my reports and we'll we'll talk for

two hours. And we're changing the way we work, but I don't see office as being the central location anymore, at least not for us. Interesting, I do want to ask you before we let you go about some of you or some of your philanthropic work as well, and especially something you've done also related to New York City called feeding nyc UM, and it's all about sort of feeding families who who otherwise not be able to fully feed themselves, especially around Thanksgiving. We are at a moment,

a critical moment right now in New York City. In many other places, we're talking about millions of people being evicted. We're talking about unemployment rates we haven't seen since recessions or even depressions. How should we be thinking as leaders about how to bridge that gap philanthropically? This is you know, this is gonna be a really I think, a focal point for UM people like myself and my company and others.

There are a lot of people who are who are hurting previous to COVID and now, like you said, they're unemployed. We work with women in need mostly is a big shelter system that helps women who are in battered relationships and they leave with their families and they get back on their feet. You know, there's just there's not enough supply for the demand of people who are homeless, and especially families and children, and we have to step up now and help them. And there's more people who are

going to need to go into the shelter system. So I started this foundation after nine eleven and I wanted to give something back to the to the to New York. We started, we've fed seventy families at that time. Last year, we've we've fed next to close to over four thousand families and then we've set about eighty thousand since nine eleven. And all I can say is that you'd be surprised people who live next door to you. It's very funny that the shelters are all around New York City. They

maybe three blocks from you. In there they're suffering and uh and we have to help them. So in my cause, you go to feeding NYC dot org sign up. We even though we got to think about how we're gonna pack turkeys and deliver them, this year, we will do that.

We will feed him. We're going to target eight thousand families this year, almost double what we did last year, because we got to step up and help those meat that was Rob Lacasio, he's the founder and CEO of Live Person and Jason, as we all just heard, I mean, he is a die hard New Yorker and the one thing that really stayed with us, I mean a lot of things because he really dug deep into the retail industry, but that whole idea that his team at Live Person

they're not going to be heading back to their offices in New York City at all. It's a game change, and it really made me rethink about kind of what the future looks like, especially for some of these big cities. Yeah, because this is not a Johnny come Lately to New York, right. This is a guy who has invested a lot of his time and energy into building up the entrepreneurial scene. He's been involved with a partnership for New York City,

so he's been a player. And so if he's thinking these sorts of things, it does make you think that the future is going to be pretty different when it comes to New York. You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week, extra sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Monday through Friday at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. This is Bloomberg