"At DHL Supply Chain, our people are at the heart of everything we do. AI agents help us relieve our teams from repetitive, time-consuming tasks and give them space to focus on meaningful, high-value work."
EVP Human Resources, DHL Supply Chain
Lindsay Bridges
The Challenge
DHL processes millions of operational touchpoints daily, including carrier tracking calls, customs duty collections, freight invoice follow-ups, temperature alerts, warehouse confirmations, and new hire onboarding. Manual processes created substantial costs in headcount, errors, delays, and missed SLAs. DHL needed operational execution at scale beyond human team capacity.
The Partnership
Starting in 2025, DHL and HappyRobot built a multi-division, multi-region, multilingual AI workforce. HappyRobot engineers embedded with DHL's operational teams to understand complex workflows, building agents that communicate and act: updating systems, routing escalations, and operating across voice, email, WhatsApp, and SMS.
"The DHL team understood very early the scale of enablement our platform brings to their organization."
Head of Product, HappyRobot
Yamil Mateo
"DHL recognized early the potential of AI agents as a new operating layer that brings speed, visibility, and consistency to supply chain operations."
CEO, HappyRobot
Pablo Palafox
Today, agents process hundreds of thousands of emails and millions of voice minutes annually across DHL's global network.
What's Live
Carrier Tracking & ETA Confirmation
Agents call carriers to collect pickup and delivery ETAs and automatically update DHL's TMS in real time, replacing separate manual tracking processes.
Customs Duty Collection
Outbound voice agents notify recipients of outstanding customs duties and collect payment commitments, enabling faster shipment release and avoiding SLA penalties.
Freight Invoice Follow-Up
Outbound agents follow up on outstanding invoices, capture payment commitments, and route escalations across global freight operations.
Smart Temperature Alert Escalation
When IoT sensors detect threshold breaches for critical items like insulin, agents immediately call operators and escalate through response levels. This use case won DHL Supply Chain's internal Supply Chain CIO Award.
New Hire Orientation & Exit Interviews
Agents call new hires to confirm attendance and logistics. For departing employees, they conduct structured exit interviews and deliver summarized reports to HR.
Warehouse Coordination
Command center teams use agents to verify item presence and manage high-priority warehouse coordination across regions.
The Results
Significant reduction in manual effort across operational communication workflows. Teams are freed to focus on higher-value, strategic work.