Key metrics
10+
live use cases
3
divisions and multiple continents
Products
"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."
Lindsay Bridges
EVP Human Resources, DHL Supply Chain
The Challenge
DHL processes millions of operational touchpoints every day, including carrier tracking calls, customs duty collections, freight invoice follow-ups, temperature alerts, warehouse confirmations, and new hire onboarding. For decades, this work was done manually: humans making calls, entering data, following up on emails, staffing 24/7 coverage to catch critical alerts before they became costly failures.
The cost of that manual model in headcount, errors, delays, and missed SLAs was enormous. DHL needed a way to run this operational layer faster, more consistently, and at a scale no human team could match.
The Partnership
Starting in 2025, DHL and HappyRobot built what is now a multi-division, multi-region, multilingual AI workforce. What made it work wasn't just the technology; it was how the two teams worked together.
HappyRobot's engineers embedded directly with DHL's operational teams to understand complex workflows across divisions, building agents that don't just communicate, but 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. They were clear that they wanted a partner with state-of-the-art technology and infrastructure."
— Yamil Mateo, Head of Product, HappyRobot
"DHL recognized early the potential of AI agents as a new operating layer that brings speed, visibility, and consistency to supply chain operations."
— Pablo Palafox, CEO, HappyRobot
Today, those 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: AI agents call carriers to collect pickup and delivery ETAs and automatically update DHL's TMS in real time, replacing previously separate manual tracking processes with a single unified system.
Customs Duty Collection: An outbound voice agent calls recipients to notify them of outstanding customs duties and collect payment commitments, enabling DHL to release held shipments faster and avoid SLA penalties.
Freight Invoice Follow-Up: Outbound agents follow up on outstanding invoices, capture payment commitments, and route escalations across DHL's global freight operations.
Smart Temperature Alert Escalation. When IoT sensors detect a temperature threshold breach for critical items like insulin, the agent immediately calls operators and escalates through response levels. This use case won DHL Supply Chain's internal Supply Chain CIO Award.
New Hire Orientation & Exit Interviews: The agent calls new hires ahead of onboarding to confirm attendance and logistics. When an employee leaves, it conducts a structured exit interview and delivers a summarized report to HR, freeing teams from repetitive coordination while improving the employee experience.
Warehouse Coordination Command center teams use the agent to verify item presence and manage high-priority warehouse coordination across regions.
The Results
A Significant reduction in manual effort across operational communication workflows. The temperature alert use case won DHL Supply Chain's internal Supply Chain CIO Award. And teams are freed to focus on higher-value, strategic work.