Former Ford CFO Tim Stone Lands At AI Firm To Help Boost Growth

October 9, 2020 9:43 am

Last week, new Ford CEO Jim Farley took the time to outline his planned organizational changes, but at the same time, announced a few staffing moves as well. One of them involved former CEO Tim Stone, who was replaced by John Lawler after accepting a position as chief operating officer and chief financial officer at ASAPP Inc. Now, we’re learning a little bit more about what those positions entail.

The New York-based artificial intelligence company just opened an office in tech hub Raleigh, North Carolina in July, and hiring Tim Stone was its first big move into attracting new talent. When Stone joins the company in mid-October, his mission will be to lead its efforts in scaling customer service software to enable help center workers to operate more efficiently.

“ASAPP is on a mission to build products that make people radically more productive and jobs more sustainable,” said ASAPP CEO Gustavo Sapoznik. “We are thrilled to welcome Tim to our team, and we look forward to learning from his knowledge and experience scaling finance and operations teams.”

Currently, the company is looking to hire around 20 people for its Raleigh office, a city ASAPP chose because “because of the wealth of talent and expertise in the area,” head of communication John Gallagher explained to WRAL TechWire. ASAPP also has offices in Silicon Valley, Buenos Aires, and London.

The company’s software is designed to help improve customer experience operations, which have suffered in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The massive increase in inbound call volumes, coupled with reduced agent availability due to shelter-in-place policies, has exposed how Fortune 500 contact center organizations are fragile and incapable of serving customers when it’s most needed,” Gallagher said. “All of the enterprise customers we serve witnessed a 200-900 percent increase in call volumes, with an average 50 percent decrease in agent availability.”

We’ll have more on the moves of current and former Ford executives soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for the latest Ford business news and non-stop Ford news coverage.

By Brett Foote

Brett's lost track of all the Fords he's owned over the years and how much he's spent modifying them, but his current money pits include an S550 Mustang and 13th gen F-150.