Dan Dowdy, the Built for the Trades podcast host, interviews JP Cahalan from XOI Technologies, which provides an app for technicians to capture and collaborate on work and get coaching. Calahan talks about his background and growing up in a small town in Florida, where he worked at a paper plate factory during his summer holidays. Later he worked in construction and became a project manager in a company specializing in modular building systems. He eventually joined XOI Technologies, where he spent nine years.
The company is focused on creating a tool for technicians that is easy to use and delivers value with every action asked of them. The company’s founders have a background in construction and manufacturing and understand the importance of building a tool relatable to the technician. The technology used in the application is designed to solve the skilled trades gap, and the company has achieved a 35% increase in completed service requests through its use. The technology leverages optical character recognition to quickly read and decode information and push it to the technician in real-time.
XOI offers a tool called Collaborate, like FaceTime on steroids, allowing live calls, drawing on screens, and real-time pointing to solve problems. They also can record interactions and use AI to make them an asset, pushing the solutions back to technicians when they have issues. The conversation emphasizes the importance of building assets and being smarter to support technicians and make them efficient.
Dan and JP discuss the importance of social media and technology in the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical fields. They mention how technicians use social media to create content about their work and how it can benefit companies to incorporate technology and social media into their operations. They also talk about how investing in education and training for technicians can help retain top talent. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of adapting to the new generation of workers accustomed to technology in their daily lives.
XOI Technologies’ app helps take pictures of data plates to create technician resumes. The app collects simple data that often gets lost in the busyness of service businesses and allows them to understand better the frequency of events and things that happen in their systems. It enables contractors to have meaningful dialogues with customers about the status of their equipment and allows for forecasting and preparation for future seasons. Additionally, the app can listen to and extract industry-specific keywords, surface that information back to contractors, and allow for a better understanding of trends and tendencies when working on different types of equipment.
About J.P. Calahan
JP Cahalan from XOI Technologies, which provides an app for technicians to capture and collaborate on work and get coaching. Calahan talks about his background and growing up in a small town in Florida, where he worked at a paper plate factory during his summer holidays. Later he worked in construction and became a project manager in a company specializing in modular building systems. He eventually joined XOI Technologies, where he spent nine years.
Website and Social Links:
- Website: https://xoi.io/
