Smart coffee systems empower operators to deliver proactive service

How can OCS technology innovations help operators deliver smarter service? That was the focus of a panel discussion At the NAMA Coffee Tea & Water show in Miami on November 4. Patrick Sheehan, president of Sheehan Brothers Vending, moderated and offered the operator perspective on a panel that included Karen Borucki, ConnectMe product manager at de Jong Duke, Matt Gannon, COO at Bevi, and Hayden McClenny, OCS national sales director at Cafection/Evoca North America.

Connected coffee equipment allows operators to shift from reactive to proactive service, thereby minimizing downtime and improving customer satisfaction. With connected coffee systems, operators can track the percent of machines at a location that are full and operational; repair time and repeat repair requests; beverage consumption and cleaning frequency.

“When you look at telemetry, you’re going from flying blind to having full visibility and having that data on the customer. It’s the pain points — that could be out of stock. Is it downtime? Is it your machine quality and maintenance? It really enables you to understand and have a visibility in what’s going on with your customer — and what’s going on with your machines — without needing to be on-site and physically seeing your machine,” Gannon said. It allows “your service to be proactive and your machine management to be, again, proactive and drive better customer outcomes.”

Integration and training are critical, the panel emphasized, and that begins with the order. Machines should be connected from the start because retrofitting later adds complexity. Department-specific training — service, marketing, IT or operations personnel — provides a structured approach to onboarding and helps ensure the operators appreciate the value of dashboards and data in managing their OCS program.

Gannon added that training should be “bi-directional,” with mechanisms for service technicians to understand the “why” behind certain tasks, and to better educate equipment manufacturers on features that would simplify service. “Building in your training where there’s space for the technicians — or whoever’s using it — to understand how it works, what’s driving the decision, and then also letting them see how it makes their jobs easier, and that they have the ability to impact change on the system,” he said.

Like other connected vending equipment, smart coffee systems allow operators to perform remote troubleshooting and avoid unnecessary service calls. Operational data can help identify underperforming brewers or popular blends by machine or location. In addition, telemetry data can help sales teams recommend better-fitting equipment based on consumption data.

The panel noted that while connected coffee systems already provide benefits, predictive maintenance and AI-driven diagnostics promise to be “the next game changer.”

“The machines and AI can really do a lot of things. We have a lot of very cool things happening within our product line,” McClenny said, ”driven by some of the data that we’re getting through the connected machines.

“Consumers want great coffee, great water, great fresh air — all these different things. And so, with the data that we collect, how can we solve that problem — for them, for the operator?” McClenny added. “There’s some really cool stuff happening, and I think we’ll all be coming out with some really neat stuff for the next couple of years.”