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Editor’s note: On Nov. 15, The Business Journal’s news team put together a roundtable discussion featuring representatives from several industries sharing their experiences using Artificial Intelligence. This is the first part of a three-part series analyzing some of the key areas in which AI is being used.

With a business community still uncertain of chatbots and artificial intelligence, Fresno-based tech company Xobee Networks has leveraged AI tools to help expand its market reach and enhance operations, leading to rapid expansion for the company.

Speaking at The Business Journal’s roundtable discussion on AI last month, Xobee Vice President of Support and Services Brandon Griggs shared some of the ways the company uses AI technology to influence everything from client interactions to major business decisions.

“We’ve been investing in AI internally,” Griggs said during the discussion. “It’s not a stretch of the imagination to say that Xobee is 100% run by AI tools.”

After developing three generations of internal AI-driven software, Xobee has gained the ability to have its systems effectively streamline processes, identify trends and provide personalized service, helping the company remain competitive in the Central Valley and beyond.

 

Customized AI enhancements

Utilizing extensions of tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Xobee has trained its AI models on more than a decade of company data. The customization allows the AI to reflect the company’s preferred tone and style in communications. Much like training a new employee, the AI model enters the environment with some knowledge of the company, but needs to be streamlined and trained in order to work effectively.

 

Griggs described the process as being similar to hiring a new employee fresh out of college — they have the basics, but users still need to teach it the specifics of your practice.

 

AI assists technicians by refining their time entries and communication, transforming technical notes into polished, professional responses.

 

Griggs used the example of how rough employee notes like “logged in, spoke with Susie, fixed the printer,” can be rewritten by AI into client-friendly updates including relevant resources and other helpful information.

 

Griggs said that the technology allows technicians to focus on their strengths — critical thinking and problem-solving — while AI handles communication refinement.

 

“We allow them [our employees] to really just fly free with what they are good at, which is critical thinking, deductive reasoning, problem solving and such, so that they can really focus on the matter,” Griggs said.

 

The company does, of course, review all responses before delivering them to clients, ensuring that AI has not made any errors in its assessment, adding that the human-tech connection works as a competitive advantage for Xobee.

 

“You don’t just say go and something pops up that’s just the most prolific answer you’ve ever seen, but it does help you steer in the right direction,” Griggs said. “The human aspect of it can remain kind of creative and not burdened down with research and procedural data analysis.”

 

AI in strategic decision-making

In addition to its outward facing AI tools that assist clients and employees alike, Xobee also leverages AI to assist decision making internally.

 

One area that Xobee has utilized AI in the past is in acquisitions. By analyzing financial data, industry trends and even source code, the company can identify potential growth opportunities.

 

Griggs used the recent acquisition of South Coast Computers, a software developer based in Orange, California, to strengthen its expertise in customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

 

Griggs went on to explain that AI played a crucial role in evaluating the firm’s potential, analyzing its past projects and skill sets to determine how they could effectively integrate with Xobee.

 

AI doesn’t provide “divine answers,” Griggs said, but it provides valuable data points.

 

Griggs emphasized that while AI plays a key role in the company’s recent success and their framework moving forward, its intent is not to limit the human workforce.

 

Ultimately, Xobee’s decisions are human-driven and guided by human intuition and strategic judgement — something that AI cannot effectively replicate.

 

One of the key players and minds behind Xobee’s intuition and judgement comes from founder Eric Rawn.

 

“Our founder, Eric Rawn, is very good with his gut feeling as to where the business should go,” Griggs said. “We do use it, though, to put a bunch of ideas in there, contextualize it around, maybe industry data…trying to hypothesize what may be coming across, what we need to be doing to remain competitive in our space.”

 

Griggs said that the insights gained from AI-driven analysis are being incorporated into the company’s fourth-generation of software tools, placing Xobee firmly in the driver’s seat to leverage the technology now and well into the future.

 

“If they can use those [tools] as sidekicks, assistance, additional resources, more tools in the toolbox…they can understand those tools and how to use them to really do what they do for business,” Griggs said.