DHL Group, the world’s largest logistics company, is accelerating its enterprise-wide AI strategy through a new partnership between its contract logistics division, DHL Supply Chain, and the AI startup HappyRobot.
The collaboration marks a significant step in deploying agentic AI to streamline operational communication and enhance both customer experience and employee engagement.
DHL Supply Chain has already successfully utilized 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.
Quili Peña, HappyRobot’s head of strategy and operations and the lead for this strategic partnership effort, emphasized the significance of the collaboration, stating: “Working with the DHL Supply Chain leadership on this landmark initiative has been fantastic.
“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.”
Strategic AI deployment across DHL Supply Chain
Sally Miller, CIO DHL Supply Chain, said: “As part of our structured and strategic approach to AI, DHL Supply Chain has been systematically identifying and validating operational use cases for generative and agentic AI technologies for over 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.”
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 – helping teams manage operational communication at scale and with greater consistency.
Yamil Mateo, HappyRobot’s Head of Product, said that 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.
Mateo said: “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.”
Danny Luo, a senior engineer on the founding team, said: “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.”
Luo and his team have also been working on major reliability improvements in the infrastructure to support the scale and criticality of the operational processes running on the HappyRobot deployment for DHL.
AI agents as a 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 Press release Page 2 of 3 handling.
By automating high-volume communication workflows, AI agents like those from HappyRobot are helping DHL deliver faster, more customer-centric services, while improving the work experience for employees and contributing to 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.
“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 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 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. We’re proud to collaborate with such forward-thinking partners to scale this vision globally.”
