Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Listen. One way of measuring
Speaker 1: the virus and all those individuals now working from home
Speaker 1: like Jason and Sleepy Hollow could be by looking at
Speaker 1: call centers. So Robert Lcacio he is founder in CEO
Speaker 1: of Live Person. It's an AI powered conversational platform for
Speaker 1: consumers to engage with companies. He joins us on the
Speaker 1: phone from New York City. Um, Rob, great to have
Speaker 1: you back with us. Are you're working from home? Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm in uh. I have a farm up in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Song I'm camping out over here with my family. All right,
Speaker 1: So you're up there in Connecticut, one of the states
Speaker 1: in lockdown. Let me just first tell let's let's get
Speaker 1: that tell us about kind of how this is all
Speaker 1: impacting your life, not you know, on a personal basis,
Speaker 1: but also as a professional basis, as someone who has
Speaker 1: to run a company. Yeah, you know, I've gone through
Speaker 1: I've been running covering over twenty five years, and I've
Speaker 1: gone through the financial crisis, not eleven, the Internet implosions.
Speaker 1: So it's the same thing. You know, we always look
Speaker 1: there's you got a strength in the balance sheet. You've
Speaker 1: gotta basically focused on your current customers and just move forward.
Speaker 1: But we we I've seen a lot over twenty five
Speaker 1: years and running the business, and I don't see this
Speaker 1: any differently, just a different set of changes that are
Speaker 1: happening in the industry, and especially to my industry. The
Speaker 1: contact center world is really being challenged right now because
Speaker 1: these are fixed locations with thousands of people inside these buildings,
Speaker 1: and yeah, this is this is you know, everyone talks
Speaker 1: about the workers who are in corporate headquarters and offices,
Speaker 1: but there are three million people in United States that
Speaker 1: are in contact centers, sitting three three ft apart from
Speaker 1: each other, and they're they're trying to service you know,
Speaker 1: customers and make sure they're getting their bills paid and
Speaker 1: all that. That's the real thing that we're focused on
Speaker 1: right now. As of last week, it's all all hands
Speaker 1: on deck with my company trying to fix that problem. Well,
Speaker 1: and Rob, it's interesting too, I mean, and I'm I
Speaker 1: know I'm not alone in this. I mean I've got
Speaker 1: an emails, especially from the big airlines essentially saying don't
Speaker 1: call us, like we just cannot handle everybody who's coming
Speaker 1: out at us right now. Is that a function of
Speaker 1: just huge volume in your estimation? Is it a function
Speaker 1: of staffing it is it a collision of both and
Speaker 1: and how long will that sort of sort of posture continue.
Speaker 1: You think like there's a future contact centers that we're
Speaker 1: selling messaging and chat in AI and automation, and that
Speaker 1: that's why our company is doing very well. We we've
Speaker 1: Service Delta and all these the biggest brands in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: but the call center fundamently voice and people sitting in
Speaker 1: like a factory line answering voice calls. This is from
Speaker 1: the past, and we're seeing the challenge Like right now
Speaker 1: we're very focused on are getting people in their homes
Speaker 1: the contact center agents. They can message from home, they
Speaker 1: can chat, they can use our software from home, but
Speaker 1: taking a phone call from home is virtually impossible. So
Speaker 1: that's really the past is being challenged, the whole past
Speaker 1: structure of call centers, and they should be digital, they
Speaker 1: should be allowing homework, they should be out of that
Speaker 1: factory model. And that's what we're faced with today. Well,
Speaker 1: I do wonder too, and Jason and I keep having
Speaker 1: conversations with our guests and just even in and around
Speaker 1: the newsroom. You know, is what are the longer term,
Speaker 1: our lasting impact as a result of the virus, Especially
Speaker 1: as more people do work common maybe they'll find out
Speaker 1: that it actually kind of works that way. And I
Speaker 1: do wonder how kind of AI and call centers and
Speaker 1: just having kind of a virtual capability in our world increasingly,
Speaker 1: how that might change longer term. It should have happened
Speaker 1: years ago. You know, this is obviously we've been preaching.
Speaker 1: But when you think of the world we live in,
Speaker 1: you and I were on our devisle. They were messaging
Speaker 1: our friends and family. We want to message brands, and
Speaker 1: we don't expect people just be sitting in these contact centers.
Speaker 1: Why can't they be at home? Why can't they have
Speaker 1: the freedom to work like that? And they can't. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that's really where they all these companies should be,
Speaker 1: and we're taking them there. But I think this is
Speaker 1: really moving it because this is a risk. If you
Speaker 1: look at large banks or telcos in the US, they
Speaker 1: may have twenty people in contact centers per brand, So
Speaker 1: that's the largest employee pool. It's not people working in
Speaker 1: the corporate headquarters or you know, corporate officers, it's in
Speaker 1: the contact center. So now this is sort of a
Speaker 1: shock to the system and saying there's got to be
Speaker 1: a different way to do this. We've been saying it
Speaker 1: like automation in AI and boughts, but now I think
Speaker 1: just the risk of not of not making the change.
Speaker 1: It's going to be very great for these companies because
Speaker 1: if you call your bank and no one's there, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get afraid. And so we know you can message somebody,
Speaker 1: you can easily do that, but calling being put on
Speaker 1: hold for four or five hours when you're trying to
Speaker 1: check your balance, people are going to get afraid. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's I'm so glad you brought that up, Rob,
Speaker 1: because there is that. And maybe this is just I
Speaker 1: am of a certain age and maybe a millennial. We've
Speaker 1: been talking a lot about them. Uh lately feels differently
Speaker 1: just thirty seconds here. Do we just outgrow this idea
Speaker 1: of like I just want to talk to a human being?
Speaker 1: Darn it? Is that just something in the past we
Speaker 1: we have in our minds that we should be talking
Speaker 1: to a machine. There are human agents that we want
Speaker 1: to talk to, but our bonds up in the last
Speaker 1: week on our our services in hospitality. So like everything's
Speaker 1: really really going gangbusters, and there's a demand. Whether you're
Speaker 1: a millennial or eighty years old, you're messaging your grandkids.
Speaker 1: If you're eighty years old, you're not talking to them
Speaker 1: any more. So this plays into really the world we're
Speaker 1: living in today. Especially once again we had all these
Speaker 1: calls from our large enterprise coasters. Can you get our
Speaker 1: agents home? We need to get them out of these
Speaker 1: contact centers because there's thousand of them that stay next
Speaker 1: to each other. Dangerous. All right, Well, it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting perspective. Really glad to catch up with the Reblicacio
Speaker 1: is the founder and CEO of Live Person. He joined
Speaker 1: us on the phone from Connecticut. Great perspectives. The world
Speaker 1: is changing for sure, and Carol, as you said, uh,
Speaker 1: it's going to change a lot long term to that
Speaker 1: kid at home, I know exactly