Eden Prairie, Minn. (May 7, 2024) – In another industry-leading innovation, CH Robinson BB #:100586 has automated transactions that many shippers still conduct via email. This breaks down long-standing barriers to automation, giving shippers who use email the same speed-to-market and lower costs as more digitally connected shippers. will be done.
CH Robinson's new technology uses artificial intelligence to classify incoming emails, read them, and replicate the steps a person would take to fulfill a customer's request. For example, shippers still often choose to send an email requesting a price quote rather than logging into a digital platform. On an average business day, a global logistics company receives more than 11,000 emails from customers and carriers requesting prices for truckloads.
“Our customers can get instant price quotes through the Navisphere platform or any of the 35 largest TMS or ERP systems we integrate with. For someone like a busy warehouse manager with a lot of cargo in the lane, email may feel more comfortable. Email works the same for everyone. No password is required. There is no field to do that,” said Mark Albrecht, vice president of artificial intelligence. “Before generative AI, responding to email requests could not be automated. Customers had to wait for a human to pass on a quote from our dynamic pricing engine. Now, our new technology allows us to respond to email requests. CH Robinson does this at scale, giving employees more time to support more complex requests for the same customers.”
While the technology responds to 2,000 customer quote requests per day, it opens the door to automation for other transactions that shippers and carriers choose to conduct via email. The technology uses a large-scale language model (LLM) that can be trained to identify emails about loading bids, pickup reservations, or shipment tracking updates.
For spot quoting, CH Robinson has already trained its model to differentiate between truckload, less than truckload (LTL), intermodal, or air freight quote requests.
So far, 2,268 of CH Robinson's truckload customers have benefited from automated email quotes. The sooner a shipper obtains a price quote and secures a carrier to pick up their shipment, the less likely they are to avoid having to pay a premium. Speed is important in the spot market. This is because most carriers are local and only a limited number of carriers can operate a particular delivery lane on a given day. According to the MIT study, a shipper who enters the spot market late could end up paying between 23% and 35% more for his shipments.
Developers at CH Robinson are currently working on applying this technology to LTL price requests. This will be especially valuable to the company's portfolio of small and medium-sized business customers that rely on email. A pilot is also underway to use his AI for price requests on expedited freight, targeting automotive customers who ship parts critical to just-in-time manufacturing.
“After automating many other types of customer transactions, email is the last mile,” said Arun Rajan, chief operating officer. “We had been exploring ways to automate email requests for several years through natural language processing and machine learning, but it was extremely difficult and expensive. Then along came generative AI. We developed this automation technology very quickly because we already had the training data ready. The good news for our customers is that they can still use email to get what they need. Our supply chain professionals are freed up to do work that is more valuable to them, our customers, and our growth.”
About CH Robinson
CH Robinson solves logistics problems for companies in a variety of industries around the world, from the simplest to the most complex. With $22 billion in freight under management and 19 million shipments annually, we are one of the world's largest logistics platforms. Our global suite of services accelerates trade and seamlessly delivers the products and goods that power the global economy. By combining our intermodal transportation management systems and expertise, we leverage information advantages to deliver smarter solutions to his over 90,000 customers and his 450,000 contract carriers on our platform. It offers. Our technology is built by and for supply chain professionals to deliver fast and meaningful improvements to your business. And as responsible global citizens, we are proud to donate millions of dollars to support causes that are important to our companies, foundations, and employees. For more information, please visit www.chrobinson.com (Nasdaq: CHRW).