How AI Cut James River Equipment’s repeat trips by 75%

For James River Equipment, communication isn’t just a support function—it’s how work gets done.

With customers spread across farms, job sites, and service locations, a single miscommunication can mean the wrong part, another trip, more downtime, and a frustrated customer who just wants their equipment running again.

For a business operating across 65 locations with roughly 2,000 employees, those inefficiencies add up quickly.

“We’re very much an assist business—we like that personal touch,” says John Bussert, Director of IT at James River Equipment. “We want to talk to our customers as people. We don’t want an endless phone tree.”

But their legacy phone system made delivering that experience harder every year.

The challenge: a 15-year-old phone system that couldn’t keep up

James River Equipment’s communication backbone was surviving, but the 15-year-old foundation was rapidly aging out.

“The hardware itself—the true backend—was still a 15-year-old box,” John explains. “We’d have to update memory, replace hard drives, and at the end of the day we weren’t getting much more than basic features—answering calls, hanging up, transferring calls.”

That created challenges on both sides of the business:

• IT spent too much time maintaining aging infrastructure

• User provisioning was slow and manual

• There were no modern integrations or AI capabilities

• Reporting and visibility into customer interactions were limited

IT leadership made a strategic decision: shift focus from maintenance-oriented IT to value-added technology that directly drives revenue. Partnering with ARG, a technology consulting firm, James River Equipment sought to streamline critical processes and optimize for peak demand.

One operational pain point stood out in particular: user onboarding.

On the legacy system, provisioning a new user could take 30 minutes or longer. With Dialpad, James River Equipment simplified that process by integrating the platform with its existing Microsoft Entra ID environment.

By integrating Dialpad with Microsoft Entra ID, James River Equipment automated user provisioning and centralized access management—helping IT onboard employees faster while maintaining strong security controls.

But the biggest impact wasn’t internal.

It was customer-facing.

The real cost of miscommunication: repeat trips and frustrated customers

In equipment dealerships, parts calls are high-stakes.

Customers often describe parts using slang—or they know what something does, but not what it’s officially called. That mismatch frequently led to the same outcome: customers would drive to the dealership, pick up a part, realize it was wrong, and have to come back.

“Before Dialpad, my system was very unorganized,” shares a frontline James River employee in a customer video. “I used my personal cell phone to send pictures and videos back and forth with the customer.”

James River needed a better way to help customers identify the right part the first time, without adding steps or forcing employees to juggle personal devices and side tools.

The Turning Point: Two-way screen share that cuts repeat trips by 75%

The most transformative change came from a deceptively simple capability: two-way screen sharing, directly from a call.

Instead of guessing—or relying on personal phones—employees send customers a link that opens instantly in a mobile browser. No app. No setup.

“We can send a link to a customer and they can show us exactly what’s happening on their machine,” John explains. “Then we can share our screen and show our parts system, and the customer can say, ‘Yes—that’s exactly what I’m looking for.’”

From the frontline perspective, the impact is immediate:

“He can show me right on the piece of equipment what he’s looking for. We can look at the parts breakdown together, and I can point out the part on his screen from anywhere in the field.”

The result:

“It cuts down probably 75% of the trips that we have to go over there to actually talk to them personally.”

Customers get the right part the first time. Downtime goes down. And the experience feels just as personal as an in-store visit—without the extra trip.

A single source of truth for customer conversations

With Dialpad, James River also gained something their legacy system couldn’t provide: conversation memory.

Dialpad AI call transcripts and recaps give parts and service teams a reliable way to:

• Review what a customer asked for—even mid-task

• Capture part numbers and details automatically

• See clear action items and next steps

• Reduce errors without adding admin work

“The recap takes a long conversation and reduces it down to three or four talking points with action items,” John says. “Our teams can go back and see exactly what was said.”

For frontline employees moving between the counter and the warehouse, this means fewer missed details—and fewer repeat visits for customers.

Integrations that remove extra steps, especially Salesforce

James River is a Salesforce shop. The goal was to reduce work—not add it.

With Dialpad’s Salesforce integration, teams no longer need to manually log calls or switch between systems. Call recaps and transcripts are automatically available, keeping records accurate and up to date.

“Our sales, parts, and service teams don’t have to jump into another system anymore,” John explains. “The system does that work for them.”

The result: less manual effort and more time focused on customers.

Rolling out Dialpad to 65 sites with a phased approach

James River approached the migration deliberately.

They started with a small but diverse pilot group—covering different site sizes, business units, and customer types (both B2B and B2C). Training happened in phases, combining remote sessions ahead of time with on-site support during go-live.

Over time, the process became highly repeatable.

“In the early days we learned a lot,” John says. “By the time we were in the twenties or thirties [of sites], we were a well-oiled machine.”

In total, James River completed deployment across 65 locations in roughly one year, with minimal disruption to daily operations.

A practical approach to AI: “It makes you better at your job”

James River didn’t turn on every AI feature overnight.

Instead, they focused first on adoption—making sure teams were comfortable with a modern, cloud-based phone system—then gradually introduced AI capabilities that delivered clear value.

There was initial hesitation, especially around AI listening to calls. But that changed as employees saw what it actually did.

“It’s not going to take your job,” John told his teams. “It’s just going to make you better at it.”

From real-time assist guidance to analytics and sentiment insights, AI became a tool for confidence—not replacement.

What’s next: deeper insights and continued innovation

James River is continuing to expand how it uses Dialpad—exploring deeper analytics, BI-style reporting, and new AI-powered workflows.

For locations like El Paso, multilingual support is another major opportunity. John shared excitement about future capabilities that could help teams communicate more effectively with Spanish-speaking customers—without requiring every employee to be bilingual.

The goal remains the same: faster resolution, fewer mistakes, and a better experience for customers in the field.