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A national energy distribution utility equipped its 2,400 field technicians with xyner agents on ruggedized tablets — reducing repeat truck rolls by 31% and cutting average ticket-to-restore time by 42%.
A regional integrated utility was running ~110,000 field-service calls per year with field-crew utilization at 58% and a customer-effort score in the lowest quartile. Outage communications were generic and late; field-crew arrival ETAs were unreliable; closing-out work-orders took post-shift admin hours that ate into crew productivity.
Deployed a Field-Dispatch Agent and Customer-Comms Agent on xyner, with edge components at regional dispatch centres for sub-second response, and full integration to SCADA, OMS, the WFM system and the customer-information system.
$10M+ annual savings (crew productivity, reduced overtime, avoided truck-rolls); field-crew utilization up to 73%; customer-effort score moved from bottom quartile to upper-middle; outage-comms accuracy and timeliness materially improved.
A regional integrated utility (electricity and gas)
Field-crew dispatch and customer communications during outages and field-service calls
From contract signature to full rollout.
Field operations need low-latency dispatch decisions and resilience to backhaul issues. The deployment runs primarily in the utility's private cloud with edge components in regional dispatch centres for sub-second decisions and graceful degradation when central connectivity is impaired.
Selects the right field crew for each call based on skill, geography, current workload, parts availability and SLA tier; dispatches via WFM with route optimization.
Subscribes to outage events; correlates customer reports against grid topology; identifies likely root cause and prioritizes restoration order.
Drafts and dispatches customer outage and service-call comms — including ETAs, status updates, restoration confirmations — in customer-appropriate channels.
Regional edge servers in dispatch centres provide sub-second dispatch decisions and continue operating during central-cloud connectivity issues; sync back when restored.
After a field call, an agent drafts the work-order completion record from the crew's voice or photo input; the crew confirms in seconds rather than spending end-of-shift admin time.
Customer-comms respects the utility's vulnerable-customer policies; agents never use pressure language and always preserve clear paths to human support.
An 8-week pilot covered one operating region before phased rollout across the utility's full service area.
Deploy private-cloud data plane; deploy edge components in one regional dispatch centre; integrate WFM, OMS, SCADA and the customer-information system.
Configure dispatch and comms agents against existing dispatch playbooks; complete first round of vulnerable-customer-policy testing.
Agents run in shadow alongside dispatchers; outputs reconciled; thresholds calibrated; integration to ITSM completed.
Live in one region for field-service and routine outage response; metrics reviewed weekly with operations leadership.
Roll out across the full service area with per-region variations.
Playbooks updated based on outcomes; autonomy thresholds tuned; storm-response playbooks introduced.
Utility operations are tightly regulated and customer-safety-critical. The deployment was designed to strengthen the existing operational governance, especially around vulnerable customers and safety-critical communications.
Agents never issue commands to grid-control systems; they only inform dispatch and customer-comms. OT actions remain human-controlled.
Customer-comms respects the utility's vulnerable-customer registry and policies; certain customers always receive enhanced support.
Outage-communication content is gated for factual accuracy; never overpromise restoration; always include safety guidance for relevant incident types.
Major-outage reports drafted automatically with the level of detail required by the state utility regulator.
Every customer-comms message, every dispatch decision, and every work-order completion is captured for regulatory and internal audit.
Three lessons for other utilities considering agentic AI in field operations.
Field operations cannot stop when central-cloud connectivity drops. Edge components and sync-on-reconnect were design properties from week one, not retrofit.
The dispatch optimization saved money; the customer-comms agent moved the experience needle. Both matter; their leverage is different.
Eliminating end-of-shift admin time gave crews back hours per week. The work-order completion agent paid for itself within the pilot.
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