DHL strengthens partnership with HappyRobot for improved operational efficiency & customer communications

Logistic provider DHL Group is speeding up its company-wide AI strategy through a new partnership between its contract logistics division, DHL Supply Chain, and the AI startup HappyRobot. The partnership is said to underline a key step in rolling out agentic AI to streamline operational communication and improve its customer experience and employee engagement.

The partnership builds on DHL Supply Chain utilization of HappyRobot’s AI agents across several regions and use cases, including appointment scheduling, driver follow-up calls, and high-priority warehouse coordination. Designed to autonomously handle phone and email interactions, these AI agents offer faster, more consistent, and scalable communication.

“Working with the DHL Supply Chain leadership on this landmark initiative has been fantastic,” said Quili Peña, HappyRobot’s Head of Strategy & Operations and the lead for this strategic partnership effort, in a statement. “Their teams brought clarity, urgency, and real commitment to making this a reality, and we’re grateful for the strong collaboration and excited to continue building together.”

DHL Supply Chain has been systematically identifying and validating operational use cases for generative and agentic AI technologies for the past 18 months, as part of the company’s AI strategy.

“Building on our extensive operational experience with data analytics, robotic process automation, and self-learning software tools, we are now integrating AI agents to drive greater process efficiency for customers while making operational roles more engaging and rewarding for employees by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks such as manual data entry, routine scheduling, and standardized communications,” explained Sally Miller, CIO DHL Supply Chain, in a statement.

DHL Supply Chain's current AI deployments handle hundreds of thousands of emails and millions of voice minutes annually, managing critical workflows. HappyRobot's Head of Product, Yamil Mateo, emphasized that tight collaboration between product, engineering, and DHL Supply Chain's technology teams proved essential for developing agentic capabilities tailored to DHL's operational complexities.

“The DHL team understood very early the scale of enablement our platform brings to their organization,” said Mateo in a statement. “They were clear that they wanted a partner with state-of-the-art technology and infrastructure.”

Danny Luo, a senior engineer on the founding team, added, “To enable this transformation, we’ve created a unified AI worker orchestration layer across email, WhatsApp, and SMS, enabling omnichannel capabilities with built-in fault tolerance and recovery.” His team has also enhanced infrastructure reliability to support the scale and criticality of DHL's operational processes running on HappyRobot.

These implementations deliver measurable results, substantially reducing manual work, boosting responsiveness, and freeing teams for strategic tasks and exception handling. By automating high-volume communications, HappyRobot's AI agents enable DHL to provide faster, more customer-focused services while improving employee experience and supporting long-term workforce retention.

“At DHL Supply Chain, our people are at the heart of everything we do,” said Lindsay Bridges, EVP Human Resources at DHL Supply Chain, in a statement. “AI agents help us relieve our teams from repetitive, timeconsuming tasks and give them space to focus on meaningful, high-value work. In today’s tight labor markets, where qualified talent is increasingly scarce, these technologies allow us to maintain - and even improve - responsiveness, customer centricity, and service consistency, while making roles more attractive and sustainable. That’s not just operational progress - it’s also a win for our people.”

HappyRobot's platform powers fully autonomous AI agents across phone, email, and messaging while seamlessly integrating with DHL's internal systems. DHL Group continues expanding its AI strategy across all divisions, testing additional use cases beyond current pilots.