Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / 1-800-Flowers.com's McCann on Using AI to Place Orders (Audio)

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1-800-Flowers.com's McCann on Using AI to Place Orders (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: down nine thirty second is with the yield of one
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  Speaker 1: point seven seven And that's a Bloomberg business flash. You're
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  Speaker 1: listening to taking stock box on Bloomberg Radio. Mother's Day. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: Mother's Day is a big day in the flower industry.
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  Speaker 1: So here to tell us more about it is Jim McCann.
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  Speaker 1: He is the founder and the chief executive of one
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  Speaker 1: eight hundred flowers dot com. And you're based on Long Island.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm surprised, Jim that you could even have the
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  Speaker 1: time to come into the studio, but thank you very much.
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  Speaker 1: I thought you'd be cutting the flowers and wrapping the plants.
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  Speaker 1: I'll be back at it. Tune all right, tell us
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  Speaker 1: just give us the volume. A business that you're going
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  Speaker 1: to do over the next two to three days. Well,
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  Speaker 1: this week we'll do well over a million gifts for
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  Speaker 1: moms all over the country, in fact, all over the world.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a it's a busy time. Five point four
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  Speaker 1: million roses, one hundred and fifty thousand plants, all delivered
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  Speaker 1: in time, all but one on time. Yes, that's that's
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  Speaker 1: the intent. To get them all there in time takes
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  Speaker 1: a lot of orchestration, pen to get all of that
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  Speaker 1: staging done the greenhouses all over the country with the plans,
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  Speaker 1: see the delivery people. The technology helps that get to
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  Speaker 1: be a little easier task each year, but it's still
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  Speaker 1: a daunting task, all right. So I'm glad you mentioned
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  Speaker 1: technology because that provides me with an opportunity to ask
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  Speaker 1: you about a couple of new initiatives Facebook, for example.
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  Speaker 1: Tell me what you're doing with Facebook. Well, I'm very
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  Speaker 1: proud of the team uh Pen. We've announced over the
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  Speaker 1: last few months three things in technology. On the app side,
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  Speaker 1: so we've had apps for a long long time, but
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  Speaker 1: we just did the next round refreshes on the iOS app,
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  Speaker 1: on the Android app, and on the Windows ten apps,
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  Speaker 1: so those are all redone in the last few months.
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  Speaker 1: And then we had three announcements of new technologies over
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  Speaker 1: the last three weeks. The first is the one you
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  Speaker 1: mentioned Facebook. Facebook has uh in the messenger service has
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  Speaker 1: now has bots, which everyone says is going to be
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  Speaker 1: the replacement for apps. The new trend and how we
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  Speaker 1: interact with learning and intelligent machines, and now you can
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  Speaker 1: order through Messenger without ever having to touch anything or
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  Speaker 1: pick up the phone verbally, you can order something from us,
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  Speaker 1: and we were tickled. My brother Chris, as you know,
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  Speaker 1: runs the company and he was there with his team
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  Speaker 1: in in San Francisco when Mark Zuckerberg was on stage
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  Speaker 1: and he chose to demonstrate how this new bot technology
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  Speaker 1: which is hanging awful lot on the first thing he
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  Speaker 1: demonstrated that you could do. He said, you know how
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  Speaker 1: easy it was to call one anger flowers. Now you
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  Speaker 1: don't even have to do that. You can order through
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  Speaker 1: the messenger bot. So that was a huge deal for
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  Speaker 1: us a couple of weeks ago, and then last week,
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  Speaker 1: week before last week announced all partnership with Amazon. Amazon
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  Speaker 1: has got this unbelievable new platform of technology where you'll
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  Speaker 1: have a little tower standing on your on your accounter,
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  Speaker 1: in your kitchen. It's called the Alexa. Right, Alexa is
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  Speaker 1: the personality of the voice in that the in that system.
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  Speaker 1: And now you can instead of saying, hey, I'd like
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  Speaker 1: to listen to pin box on blue Berg and have
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  Speaker 1: it automatically turned on for you. In addition to that,
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  Speaker 1: you can say pause phim for a minute because I
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  Speaker 1: need to send laws to mom for Mother's Day. Again.
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  Speaker 1: It will go into your roller deex, it will select
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  Speaker 1: the address you want the product you want, all done verbally,
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  Speaker 1: and that's that's a big partnership when we've worked on
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  Speaker 1: a long time and coincidentally came right after the Facebook announcement,
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  Speaker 1: and then just this week we announced a partnership with
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  Speaker 1: IBM S Watson and we have our own personality we've
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  Speaker 1: named Gwen, and gwen sits on top of Watson, which
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  Speaker 1: is artificial intelligence platform and so now you can order
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  Speaker 1: through our site through Gwyn. With conversational commerce, you can
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  Speaker 1: interact with a bot to get all the different kinds
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  Speaker 1: of recommendations you want and then have it automatically ordered
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  Speaker 1: for you. So it's been a busy three weeks of
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  Speaker 1: big time announcements and frankly there's more to come. Take
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  Speaker 1: the Facebook experience for just a moment, and I'm wondering
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  Speaker 1: if you could share with other business owners the challenges
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  Speaker 1: or what they should expect. Is there any anything, any
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  Speaker 1: guidance or advice that you can offer a business owner
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  Speaker 1: who's thinking of doing something similar for their industry. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I think I think the lesson that we've learned would
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  Speaker 1: probably probably apply to most businesses, especially small businesses, which
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  Speaker 1: which is where we play. It's not hard to see
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  Speaker 1: what the next technology revolution is going to be. All
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  Speaker 1: you have to do is listen to your program, watch
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  Speaker 1: the Bloomberg TV read Bloomberg Business Week. You see the
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  Speaker 1: new technologies. And we've been seeing this talk about artificial
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  Speaker 1: intelligence for quite a while now and then only in
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  Speaker 1: a recent few months talk about box. Well, it's easy
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  Speaker 1: to read what they are. So you need to step
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  Speaker 1: back and say, in a business like ours at One Flowers,
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  Speaker 1: it's all about convenience. So will any of these technologies
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  Speaker 1: make it even more convenient for customers make us more
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  Speaker 1: accessible because at the end of the day, we're in
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  Speaker 1: the business of helping out customers act on their thoughtfulness,
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  Speaker 1: all right. So so the idea of being if it
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  Speaker 1: answers the question will it make the relationship for the
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  Speaker 1: customer more convenient? If you check the box, yes, you
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  Speaker 1: should go ahead with this kind of project. But in
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  Speaker 1: terms of time and money, is it always going is
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  Speaker 1: it like more than you think the thought that you
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  Speaker 1: were going to spend or well, it depends on a
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  Speaker 1: platform you're on. You know what kind of technology you have,
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  Speaker 1: So sometimes you almost have to look to throw the
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  Speaker 1: old technology out to leap frog onto the new platform. Fortunately,
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  Speaker 1: we keep investing in technology. So we were just looking
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  Speaker 1: talking to a company earlier this week who said, geez,
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  Speaker 1: we'd like to do that too, and when we looked
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  Speaker 1: at their technology, they really have the leap frog, so
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  Speaker 1: it's so expensive for them. So my recognition is to
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  Speaker 1: stay current, that is, to when everything else has to
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  Speaker 1: be cut back for one reason or another, keep your
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  Speaker 1: investment in technology going because you could fall so far
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  Speaker 1: behind it you really can't catch up. In this convenience world,
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  Speaker 1: the convenience for the deliver the delivery service, how has
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  Speaker 1: that changed, Well, I think changing dramatically. You know, we
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  Speaker 1: have a test we announced a month ago with Uber,
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  Speaker 1: with the Uber product. We're doing that and bossed in
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  Speaker 1: today all these last mild delivery things. I was chatting
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  Speaker 1: with a friend recently who's a local merchant, has a
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  Speaker 1: dry cleaning business, has a truck, goes around, comes to
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  Speaker 1: my house twice a week, wants to drop off, wants
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  Speaker 1: to pick up. It's a wonderful service. But I was
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  Speaker 1: saying to why don't you do other things? Why don't
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  Speaker 1: you bring other things to my house? And so we
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  Speaker 1: got into a conversation. I was happy to hear him
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  Speaker 1: say yesterday, Hey Jim, we're doing new stuff. I'll tell
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  Speaker 1: you about it next week. Very good. Thank you very much,
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  Speaker 1: Jim McCann, founder, chief executive of one eight hundred flowers
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  Speaker 1: dot com and at others coming up. Bloomberg Law brought
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  Speaker 1: to you by New Jersey Institute of Technology, investing more
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  Speaker 1: than a hundred and ten million dollars a year and
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  Speaker 1: applied research to solve problems and improved life. Learn more
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