In this riveting podcast episode, host Madhukar Kumar engages in a deep and enlightening conversation with Scott Booker, the Chief Customer Officer at EasyPark. Together, they embark on a journey to uncover the fascinating story behind EasyPark, from its inception and the intricate process of its creation to the breadth of its operational territories and its exciting plans for future expansion.
In this riveting podcast episode, host Madhukar Kumar engages in a deep and enlightening conversation with Scott Booker, the Chief Customer Officer at EasyPark. Together, they embark on a journey to uncover the fascinating story behind EasyPark, from its inception and the intricate process of its creation to the breadth of its operational territories and its exciting plans for future expansion.
Scott Booker generously shares his insights into the inner workings of EasyPark, shedding light on the innovative ways they harness data to fine-tune their services. He also elucidates how cutting-edge AI and mobile technology seamlessly integrate into their approach, paving the way for an exciting future in urban mobility.
Scott also offers thought-provoking commentary on the evolution of parking management, highlighting the potential transformative impact of autonomous vehicles on parking requirements. He paints a vivid picture of the pivotal role that EasyPark envisions playing in the future of city planning, making this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in the ever-evolving urban landscape
Key Quotes:
Time Stamps
(02:45) - Introduction to EasyPark
(03:18) - The Functionality and Benefits of EasyPark
(06:06) - Real-Time Data and Analytics in EasyPark
(21:50) - The Role of AI in EasyPark
(28:39)- Quick Hits
Links
Madhukar: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to How We Made That App. I'm your host, Madhukar Kumar. After starting my career as a developer and then as a product manager, I'm now the Chief Marketing Officer at SingleStore. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Scott Booker, the Chief Customer Officer at EasyPark Group. Scott is an expert tech executive and has worked at Expedia Group for Hotels.
com. And CEO at HealthCreates. com, helping customers experience improve with the power of AI and of course, a lot of human power as well. Welcome, Scott. Thank you very much, Parakar. Let me start with a question that I get asked quite a lot. Scott, how do you pronounce your name?
Scott: Scott
Booker.
Madhukar: Got it. You've been at Hotels.com, the health industry, at Healthgrades, and even, for retired living as well, [00:01:00] and now at EasyPark. What drives you in the service space? Tell us a little bit about your history and your journey, where you started and where you are right now.
Scott: So, right out of undergrad, I, went to work for Accenture, as a developer.
So, you and I have a very common background, actually. I worked for a team that created large scale CRM solutions for hotels and casinos. So, I don't know if you've ever been to a casino and, you know, used one of those cards to track your play and then get costs off that. That basically was conceptualized by my team at Accenture way, way back when, and now all of them have it.
So very early on, learn to aggregate customer information and use that information to, to reward and to improve customer service and things of that nature. Fast forward, I've been in two sided marketplaces online now for about 20 years. And I absolutely love it. I sort of, I guess kind of fell into it.
maybe when I, when I [00:02:00] went to, hotels. com in the, in the beginning. And, just love the aspect of, you know, having that supply and demand, having different needs and then trying to find a win win solution of that, you know, of those needs in the middle and using technology to make that possible. So, it's been something that, drives me, you know, since I began in this space.
and, and honestly, the same problems exist across multiple industries. When you talk about two sided, marketplaces, so I've crossed, travel, healthcare. now parking, multiple, different industries and the same problems exist. So, kind of pride myself on being a problem solver, so it's, it's been a fun kind of ride.
Madhukar: Speaking of parking, Scott, tell us a little bit about what is EasyPark and how do people use it?
Scott: Yeah, so EasyPark, actually was created and started as a company in Stockholm, Sweden in 2001. Originally, the founding fathers, if you will, tried to [00:03:00] create a call in telephone service for parking. And so you called the line and gave your license plate and credit card and so forth, you pay for parking that way.
Shortly thereafter, you know, mobile and mobile apps took off. And so they kind of transitioned or shifted to try to find a product market fit in. mobile payment park part for parking. And so, as they transition to that, it sort of really identified an opportunity to make paying for parking so much easier.
If you think about going down to downtown, to a meeting or what have you, and you try to find a parking spot, well the first thing you do is to, how do I pay for this? Lemme see if I've got change in my pocket. Where's the pay and display machine so I can go put my coins in and I pay for two hours whether I need it or Not maybe I only need an hour, but I still got to pay for two hours I go to my meeting and two hours goes by really quickly [00:04:00] And now I got to figure out how to go pay, you know Find more coins to put into the machine and extend my time.
So it's a really Not a very good user experience. And so these guys that founded the company created this opportunity to make it so much easier just through an app. And so you download an app, you, put in your, your license plate for whatever car or cars that you, you park with, put it in a credit card.
And so anytime, you know, you go to park, you just use the app. You don't have to look for a pay and display. And if you run up against your, you know, two hour limit, you just extend your time. And so, we have really expanded, into now Europe. UK, US, we've bought a couple of companies and been growing both organically and through acquisition.
And so, we're known as EasyPark in Europe, Ringo in the UK, and in the US it's ParkMobile. and so, our, our whole mission is to make cities more livable. you wouldn't believe the, you know, what happens [00:05:00] with, cities trying to reduce congestion and manage these parking spots. In fact, it goes all the way back to...
The early 1900s, when cars started proliferating around, you know, the world, especially in the U. S., a lot of these cities and, and, government institutes put in regulations for the number of parking spots that had to accompany any development. And so there's actually, I think, 2 billion parking spots in the U.
S. Most of them, at any one point in time, are unoccupied. except for in the city center where they're over occupied. And so, our role as a company is to try to, reduce that congestion to help the consumer, make it easier, help the city better manage their parking inventory and improve, you know.
Approve that flow of traffic and make cities more livable that way.
Madhukar: So at any given point of time, are you able to look at how many parking spots are taken and how many are empty in real time?
Scott: Yeah, so, we have a product that allows us to do basically a mapping of a city and the parking inventory that they have.
and we monitor that to see what the occupancy is at any one point in time. You can imagine at a city, a city centered in the middle of a Monday through Friday business day. that, that, you know, occupancy changes, throughout the day and throughout the week for that matter. So, we offer that product to our operators, mostly cities, so they can, you know, understand the traffic flow and how, how they can manipulate or change that to make it easier and better for, They're citizens.
Madhukar: Incidentally, that's one of the superpowers I asked for, the ability to find out which parking spots are available before I drive in. But speaking of the name EasyPark, how did that name come about? Was it impossible to park already taken?
Scott: Yeah, no, I think the original guys were looking for something that really, you know, spoke to and, [00:07:00] was a good, you know, example of what we were trying to do as a product and make it an easy was a large part of what we're trying to do.
you know, you see it in our reviews, you see it in the feedback we get through customer care and so forth. we make it so much easier for people to do what they need to do in terms of parking. So, we sort of gravitated in that direction. Now again, we have multiple brands now, so we're actually in the process of kind of evaluating, how do we, how do we move forward with those brands?
We're in the regions that we're operating in.
Madhukar: So how many cities are you currently operating in across the globe?
Scott: Yeah, currently we're in about 4,000 cities. and again, it's mostly Europe, UK and the US, we're constantly trying to figure out, which geographies we want to go into next.
And, you know this, I'm sure from your background, it's, There's always a thousand things we could work on, particularly as a product and technology organization. And, strategy for me is as much about what you say no to as what you say yes to. So we do try to stay focused and [00:08:00] we, we want to do really well in Europe, UK and the U.
S. for now. And then over time, we think this is a worldwide business. And eventually, we'd like to go into some new geographies and We'll see how that kind of progresses.
Madhukar: I can imagine that it's probably dealing, not probably, it is dealing, the app with a lot of real time data coming in at a very high speed.
And, do you have some sort of a data strategy or some sort of a strategy to have real time information? Or are you okay if the analytics comes in much later?
Scott: No, that's actually one of the things that I think, well, I'd like to say I'm putting a large emphasis on. I've been with the company since April of this year.
And, again, in my experience with two sided marketplaces, data and the analytics of that data is incredibly important to make that two sided marketplace work the way it should and, and be as efficient as possible. So we've, we've actually elevated our, focus on the platform around data to support all of our [00:09:00] business.
And our customers, for that matter, and the use of that data, you know, how to develop insights for that, which, you know, should drive everything we do. We're really putting a focus and emphasis on that. So yeah, that's a big part of our focus and how we move that forward.
Madhukar: And it looks like you might have a lot of very useful data about traffic and occupancy and, you know, times of the day and so on.
Have you considered sharing it with city planners on what would be a better idea for a better parking and improve people's quality of life in general?
Scott: We do. we, we absolutely believe that this is a big part of how to manage this, inventory, if you will. Again, there's, there's a lot of parking spaces out there.
Many city operators don't know how many they have. They don't manage it that way. they essentially just have people walking around the streets looking for, you know, meters to see if they've run out of time. so, we have a parking data as a service type of product that we offer to [00:10:00] cities, which, you know, again, maps and, aggregates that information about their parking inventory and occupancy throughout the day and week, and we give them insights to help them better manage that.
You know, what, what we're trying to do is, is reduce that flow and congestion that happens. on a regular basis in cities so that they can, you know, focus on, you know, using their, their, their investment dollars and so forth to make their cities more livable, more, you know, more usable for the citizens. And so part of that is really understanding using that data, what's happening on a, on an hourly basis, on a daily basis and a weekly basis.
Madhukar: So based, based on your response, I really have a lot of, you've really awakened my curiosity here, few questions about that data. And if you cannot share the details, that's fine as well. But based on what you have seen, which city is probably the worst in terms of, parking availability? Oh, I don't know
Scott: if I could give you a specific city from that standpoint.
They [00:11:00] all, to be honest, they're, they're very similar, and they're, I would say infancy with regards to how to manage this process. I mean, they. Have typically thought of it more from a enforcement perspective, and that's part of us. We want to change that narrative. Of course, it's unnecessary to pay for parking when there's limited availability in a downtown city core.
and so we want to make it easier for both sides to be able to make that transaction, simple, if you will. and so, the infancy of how cities manage it are pretty similar across the board. in, in other words, it's, it's, it's not very sophisticated.
Madhukar: So, obviously, you would have seen some trends around the data that you see.
For example, during the pandemic, I'm sure the data was very different versus maybe what it is now. One question I have is, when I look at offices, [00:12:00] They're mostly empty, at least in the Bay Area where we live. But when we go out, the traffic is back to its normal, or worse than what it was pre pandemic. The restaurants are full, and of course the airports are busy as well.
So where is everybody going, Scott?
Scott: Yeah, you know, this is, the previous business I was in, I was, selling cars, during this time period, you know, coming out of pandemic and then, you know, kind of recovering from that. And, same kind of dynamic we were seeing, like, people were driving more, it seems like they were driving more and more recklessly during, that recovery period than they were in the pandemic time period.
I, I think, you know, we, we are seeing, uh, cities come back to life, not as quickly as maybe we, we would have, in, normal circumstances, Europe in, in all, it's, you know, and everything that we're seeing in our data seems to be back to pretty much where it was pre pandemic. The U. S. has been a little slower, to be honest.
there's been some cities that are, you know, are still working [00:13:00] more. remotely with, with some hybrid, kind of environment going on. So, you know, I think, who knows how this will progress. you know, I expect at some point over the future. Those cities will get a little bit more congested from people driving around and parking in the cities again.
Madhukar: So, speaking about data and analytics, do you also look at maybe what is more correlated to certain aspects of the data? For example, is the occupancy directly correlated to the time of the day, to maybe a season, and do you, are there some big... You know, insights that you see, which repeats itself.
Scott: Yeah, for sure you know, I, I won't mention the city, but I'll give you an example of one that we've, we're working with here in the U. S. it's got obviously CityCorps with a university very close to the CityCorps. And, as you can imagine, as the business day begins, then, That city core begins to fill up with regards to, you know, occupancy and so [00:14:00] forth, and you can kind of see how it, it, it progresses, throughout the morning.
and it, the areas around the most congestion tend to be the high traffic areas around the university, for instance. and so, it's then, you know, by the mid-afternoon, things start to wane and occupancy slows down. Again. You can imagine this picture of, red, yellow, green of. of areas or streets that get, you know, super congested or ones that aren't quite.
So, if you're on the city side, operator side, try to figure out how to better manage that. You know, you would want to adjust how you're potentially, you know, charging for parking or offering. some, some, some cities don't even... charge for parking in certain streets. They may want to start doing that to try to change the flow of the traffic around the city core where it really gets congested in the middle of the day.
So it's really a cool product, and I think it can help cities better manage their process for sure.
Madhukar: And speaking of your role and how you look at that data, how do [00:15:00] you use the data to drive a lot of what? The decisions you and your team make.
Scott: Yeah, so in my role, I have responsibility for marketing, product, customer care, and analytics.
So, all of my areas, I, you know, will push and lead in helping them use data to make decisions. I think it's super important in this space. So, if I'm on the product side, for instance, I need to understand What the data is telling me about how the app's being used, how many errors are being thrown, what's the A B test environment look like when we're running multiple tests, because we're always in a constant, you know, kind of mode to improve the conversion of that app to, to continue to simplify.
There shouldn't be any, you know, roadblocks or hindrances to, to make it easy to park. So, That's a continuous data driven process to try to improve that. Customer care is a, in and of itself, a [00:16:00] driver of insights because if we make a mistake, we've done something incorrectly or not made it simple, then the customer's going to end up calling us and telling us that it's not working or there's a problem or what have you.
And I'll knock on wood, our contact ratio is super low, super, super low, because I think we do make it so easy in the app. Bye. On occasion, you know, something happens and we, and we get calls. And so these teams talk regularly and share data to know what's happening to cause a, a call to come in. You know, we can't, we would like not to have a large scale customer care centers handling all, all these complaints.
So if we can make the product even more efficient, then we can reduce that. On the marketing side, you know, we're, we're. you know, one of our key drivers is, is, you know, when somebody parks, it's a sign or what they're trying to find. An open spot. So that is generating a lot of data for us about what's working, what's not.
And we're constantly testing to figure out how to optimize that. And that's a [00:17:00] never ending process. So, you know, all of these areas are utilizing that data to better improve the service on both sides of the marketplace.
Madhukar: Do you often get customers who try to pass on their parking tickets to you?
Scott: Yeah, you know, sometimes we get confused from time to time on exactly what we can and can't do for them on that front.
But, you know, we do have call centers in case there are issues. We do try to handle things for them. And, redirect them when it's something that we can't, you know, that's out of our control. But if it's something that we've done or we've caused, then certainly we will take care of it. And
Madhukar: speaking of the data in general, do you have, like, one pool of data where you use it for all analytics and as well as real time, you know, customer success or customer support issues?
Or are they in different places? Like, how do you think about data in general? When so much of it is happening in real time and then there's a [00:18:00] lot of it that's sitting that has happened in the past and try to bring the two together.
Scott: Yeah, so again, not like, unlike any other business where you have data being generated from multiple systems that have different functions.
So I have a, you know, a call center function that has its own tool with its own data. I have A B tests and, you know, analytics around the app that are being generated all the time. you know, so on and so forth. We, we then try to, you know, we, we, we pull all that information together and source it on one...
Huge lake, if you will, and then, we develop, analytics capabilities off of that, and we, we do, you know, there's no way we would have enough analysts to handle everything, so we try to democratize that data in a way that people can access it and use it, to their own heart's desire, so we, you know, we have reporting capabilities that, that do the basics for us, and then when it, when it comes to something a little more, tedious, Thank you That's where you might get [00:19:00] a pure data analyst or data science person to get involved to understand the details.
Madhukar: And, you know, speaking of that's kind of what we have been trying to do as well. That's that was the background for my question. A lot of our customers at single store, they bring in that real time data with the vast corpus of data, which is analytical based. And then if you combine the two, you are able to make decisions in real time to offer promotions, for example.
So that was going to be my next question. Let's say I am using EasyPark, I'm an existing customer. If I go towards a parking garage... Does the app tell me automatically, go to this place and there is an empty spot or, hey, there's a quick offer here. If you just go to the next parking spot, there's a 20 percent discount and it's for longer time.
Are there some, some promotions that happen because of the real time data and analytics as well? [00:20:00]
Scott: Yeah, so the app has the capability to help you find open spots. we don't typically have to do a bunch of promotions to drive activity. typically when it comes to parking, people already have a destination in mind or an event in mind or a meeting in mind, in mind that they have to attend.
And, you know, a lot of decisions happen along the way or when they arrive at that destination. And there's a lot of factors that go into it, you know, availability, closeness to my event, weather. if I'm late or not, you know, if I have plenty of time and safety and security, so. On all those factors, we, you know, that that's, those are areas that we can explore from a product perspective to continue to evolve the, the, the simpleness, the ease of use, the product market fit, if you will.
Madhukar: And then at the product level, in terms of ai, how are you using ai? Are you looking at using ai? And by that I specifically mean generative ai, which includes large language models. [00:21:00] Are you thinking about using it or are you already using it with your data?
Scott: Yeah, so, I would say we're kind of early stage on that front.
We're, exploring how best to utilize that. it's almost a weekly conversation right now about how best to introduce and utilize it. We have a couple of areas that we think make sense for us. you know, certainly pulling together a lot of that data we've talked about with regards to that, that the ongoing occupancy and so forth around the city, that's a, that's a, a rich area, customer service and how do we answer questions and, respond to customers from that standpoint, that's a, that's another area that we could do.
Remember, we're in multiple countries too, so. The whole language, culture, translation, all that stuff, there's, there's opportunities around AI and, you know, that we can utilize technology to better, you know, respond and so forth. So, I would say we're kind of early stage on that front, but it's something that's on our mind almost, almost weekly.
Madhukar: And what's the, what's the vision or the next big phase of EasyPark? Are [00:22:00] you looking at going to additional? New cities, maybe go to Mars and colonize and start taking control over some of the parking spaces. Is it new vehicles? What will happen when automatically driven vehicles find, you know, a spot on their own?
Have you thought about where the world would be for EasyPark in the next two to five years?
Scott: I believe that this offering that we have is a worldwide opportunity for us. you know, it's For those cities that are offering paid parking, and many don't, but when they do, it's very clunky, and so, because we've created an app to handle the payment and the process around that, it's so easy and simple, that I think we can continue to look at how we grow geographically, around the world.
even within our existing, geographies, there's a kind of a, a evolution of these cities in terms of how they grow, so you might, [00:23:00] you know, we, we might start work in, say, LA, in the city of LA, but, LA is surrounded by, I don't know, hundreds of, you know, suburb cities that, You know, that need to be expanded over time.
If I go talk to the city of LA, it doesn't mean I get all of them. I have to go work with all of them to kind of, you know, individually. So I think we got, you know, cities that we're currently in, that we need to continue to work with all of the surrounding areas. We're pretty, we get good concentration with most, geographies in Europe, where if you go from one suburb to another in Europe, you, we're going to be available.
And so I think that's, you know, evolution of the geographies that we're in is going to be a big one. you know, that the evolution of EV, we're, we're seeing this, because we're, you know, our home market is Sweden right next to Norway. Norway is the most sophisticated EV market in the world right now, and it's leading and teaching us, where this, this is headed.
And so, It's, it's almost the Wild West right now with [00:24:00] regards to where EVs headed with charge points and, how that's being done, outside of Tesla, you know, that they have theirs kind of figured out, if you will. So we're kind of placing bets just like any good product guy would to make sure, you know, you understand the market, you're learning, you're trying to figure out product market fit so that, you know, as this thing kind of solidifies and, you know, you figure out how things are going to move forward, that you're a player there for the long run.
we're continuing to evolve and, and see how we play in that space as we go forward. So there's, there's, there's lots of opportunities for us for the future. Do you
Madhukar: think that autonomous vehicles, if 100 percent of vehicles were autonomous, that would change or obviate the need for parking at all?
Scott: Well, I, I think, it changes the, the interface, if you will.
It may be more of an in car interface rather than an app interface, and we're playing in both. So we, we feel like, again, we're making bets on both sides of that. Yeah. Bye. the challenge and the difficulty when, in any two sided marketplace, the reason why two sided marketplaces work online [00:25:00] on the inventory side is that you've got this fragmented inventory that somebody's figured out how, to make it, you know, aggregate it together and make it accessible in one spot.
It's very challenging and it takes years and years to go work with cities and develop contracts and get them signed up and, you know, working with us. so... Yeah, you know, I think that's sort of our secret sauce is we, we have worked with all these cities around the world and we continue to work with them and, and others to, to build that inventory.
So even if things go completely autonomous, they still have to, autonomous companies, the OEMs are going to have to come to us or. People like us to find out where the parking availability is. So I feel good that we're in a decent spot from that standpoint.
Madhukar: One last question, and then we'll move into quick hits.
If you were to advise an app developer that's looking to build something similar. Today, what would your advice be for them? You
Scott: may, [00:26:00] you may kind of identify with this coming from your product background, but, you know, to me, it comes back to discoverability as a product, you know, manager, if you will.
it's using data to understand where your opportunities are, and where you don't have data, trying to find research that will give you some kind of insight, which then leads to hypotheses. And, you know, you need to prioritize those based on what you think back of the envelope business case looks like.
Once you have prioritized and you've got some idea of what you think is the likely or, you know, best chance of succeeding, then you want to go test it. And, like I've got a really deep background in A B testing. I've seen it work. I've seen it drive company performance and growth over years and years.
A huge proponent of it. Why, why go and waste millions of dollars on something that might work when you can prove that it works over time and micro levels and then build up from there. So, you [00:27:00] know, that whole idea of taking your hypotheses, A B testing, refining, A B testing, refining, till you find that product market fit.
That's, that's to me that, you know, how it should work and how you should think
Madhukar: about it. All right, let's go to the quick hits section where we just have three questions and try to answer it without thinking. First one, how do you explain your job to someone who's not in technology? Like, for example, to your parents or to your close people that you love or of who are your friends and they know nothing about either parking or technology.
Scott: That's a good one because my parents, you know, neither one of them knew or have known what I've done for so long. But what I tell them I start with is, I'm a problem solver. So product mindset comes from how do I solve problems or find issues in the marketplace that we can do more efficiently with technology.
to solve a problem. And so, in this case, you know, we're, we're finding inefficiencies with paying [00:28:00] for parking. You know, you experience them yourself, see how much easier it is to do it through a mobile app than it is through, you know, a manual process. So that's how I explain it. What
Madhukar: app do you use the most every day besides, of course, EasyPark?
Scott: Yeah. So, it's probably two on the top of my list. I. I don't do traditional news per se. I probably have become a consumer of snippets, probably more like most people these days. So Twitter or X is still pretty high on my list, you know, just to catch the quick news of the day. And I'm a pretty avid Spotify user on a regular basis as well.
So those two are probably high on my list.
Madhukar: Last question, what do you do outside of work?
Scott: Well, I work a lot. you know, this is a global business, so I'm traveling almost weekly, pretty much weekly. I'm going to spend, you know, at least a week a month in, in Europe. And, you know, we have our main office in the U.
S. is Atlanta, and I live in Dallas, so I'm flat, flying around a lot. [00:29:00] but, to that, you know, point, the only way that I sort of decompress and, make sure I'm taking care of my physical health and, and, and having that balance is through. Working out. So, you know, I spent a lot of time in the gym.
It clears my head. You know, it's, it's a way for me to sort of decompress. And, you know, I get a lot of good ideas when I'm doing that. So that's, that's what I do.
Madhukar: Very good. Thanks so much, Scott, for being with us on this episode. Really appreciate this. And should users be able to just go download EasyPark on either App Store, on the iPhone, or?
The other one?
Scott: Yeah, so if you're in Europe, look for EasyPark. If you're in the UK, look for Ringo. And if you're in the US, look for ParkMobile. Very good. Thanks again, Scott. Thank you.