This next phase of DHL's AI strategy focuses on agentic AI for its contract logistics division.
Logistics and shipping juggernaut DHL Group is continuing to roll out its enterprise-wide AI strategy, this time leveraging a new partnership between its contract logistics division DHL Supply Chain and AI startup HappyRobot.
This phase will deploy agentic AI to streamline operational communication, customer experience and employee engagement.
DHL Supply Chain has already successfully deployed HappyRobot’s AI agents across several regions and use cases, including appointment scheduling, driver follow-up calls, and high-priority warehouse coordination.
These agents autonomously handle phone and email interactions, enabling faster, more consistent, and scalable communication.
DHL Supply Chain says it has been identifying and validating operational use cases for generative and agentic AI technologies for the last 18 months.
“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,” said Sally Miller, CIO DHL Supply Chain.
Current deployments already in use across DHL Supply Chain target hundreds of thousands of emails and millions of voice minutes annually. AI agents are supporting key workflows such as appointment scheduling, transport status calls, and high-priority warehouse coordination.
Close collaboration between the product and engineering teams and DHL Supply Chain’s technology departments has been crucial to designing new agentic capabilities that reflect the nuances of DHL’s operations, according to Yamil Mateo, HappyRobot’s Head of Product.
“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.”
To enable this rollout, the team created a unified AI worker orchestration layer across email, WhatsApp, and SMS, enabling omnichannel capabilities with built-in fault tolerance and recovery. Major reliability improvements in the infrastructure are underway to support the scale and criticality of the operational processes running on the HappyRobot deployment for DHL, said Danny Luo, a senior engineer on the team.
AI agents is the new operating model
These implementations have already shown measurable impact, significantly reducing manual effort, increasing responsiveness, and enabling teams to focus on more strategic tasks and exception handling.
“AI agents help us relieve our teams from repetitive, time consuming tasks and give them space to focus on meaningful, high-value work. That’s not just operational progress—it’s also a win for our people,” said Lindsay Bridges, EVP Human Resources at DHL Supply Chain. “
HappyRobot’s platform enables fully autonomous AI agents to interact via phone, email, and messaging, while integrating seamlessly with DHL’s internal systems. And DHL Group continues to expand its AI strategy across all divisions. Beyond current pilots, further use cases are also being tested.
“At HappyRobot, we envision AI workers coordinating global supply chain operations—not just moving data, but actively managing workflows,” said Pablo Palafox, CEO of HappyRobot. “Too often, people are stuck maintaining systems and inboxes, with little time to solve exceptions or improve processes. DHL recognized early on the potential of AI agents as a new operating layer—one that brings speed, visibility, and consistency to logistics.
