AI Agent & Copilot Podcast: Copilots Help Vixxo Streamline Service for Starbucks, 7-Eleven
Welcome to the AI Copilot Podcast, analyzing the latest AI Copilot and agent developments from Microsoft and its partners, delving into customer use cases, and exploring how AI plus the Cloud helps customers reimagine their business. In this episode, Tom Smith speaks with Bobby Hunnicutt, vice president of IT at Vixxo, and Lucas Diaz, managing partner of Microsoft implementation partner Ludia Consulting.
This episode is sponsored by the AI Agent & Copilot Summit NA, taking place March 17-19, 2025 in San Diego, California.
Highlights
Vixxo and Ludia Consulting Background/Business Challenges (01:31)
Vixxo provides facilities maintenance for companies including Starbucks and 7-Eleven; an example of work is repairing an espresso machine at Starbucks. Vixxo’s network of service providers is roughly 150,000 technicians. It has 900 employees. Ludia is an implementation partner for Microsoft Dynamics, 365 technologies, specializing in “physical operations.”
The “silver tsunami” means many individuals are leaving the facilities maintenance field; these include HVAC technicians, electricians and plumbers retiring. The business need: increase efficiency for those still in the workforce, as well onboard and train new technicians quickly. Plus, equipment is becoming more complex and more IoT-enabled.
AI Opportunities (07:20)
The opportunity Vixxo had was to use GenAI and LLMs with technical bulletins and manuals to support technicians in the field. The company built “VITA” or Vixxo Intelligent Technical Assistant, to provide access to data, technical manuals, standard operating procures, and best practices. It went live with 200 internal technicians in July and is in test mode with 50 external techs.
LLM Lessons and Change Management (08:48)
It’s important to find the right LLM to fit your use case. Hunnicutt says GenAI is the easy part of such projects. “Once you get your data and the right prompt and all the stuff kind of stood up in Azure, it just kind of worked. That’s where it kind of felt like magic.” Vixxo is using ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo and 4.0. Vixxo spent more time on change management, testing, data prep and security than it did on the AI technology. Lesson learned: models will be deprecated; a new release means the old one is shut down so users need to be prepared to retest and adapt as new models come out. Vita is embedded in Microsoft Dynamics and an app for Vixxo’s service provide network; data is stored in an Azure Data Lake.
ROI, Metrics, and Future Plans (18:47)
Three key metrics Vixxo is tracking: time spent on site, with a goal of lowering that figure; rate of first-time fixes; callbacks or return visits, and ability to reduce them. Vixxo will expand use of VITA, adding more documents and pieces of equipment. In the future, agents could help analyze work tasks from customers, find the right technician, and ask them their expected arrival time so it can be conveyed to the customer.
