Logistics / Third-party logistics
C.H. Robinson: Processing ocean booking requests with customer-specific context
- Company
- C.H. Robinson
- Country
- United States
- Adoption stage
- Limited operation
- Source published
- In use from
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
C.H. Robinson explained that ocean and air bookings were hard to automate because the customer receiving a quote and the suppliers making the actual bookings were different parties. One customer might have 50 suppliers. Even with digital booking forms and data exchange, only about 5% of booking requests had been automated over roughly 10 years. Staff had to handle the remaining requests manually.
Technology and data
The company deployed multiple AI agents in China to process ocean booking requests. One agent adds customer-specific context to requests so other agents account for that customer's preferences, requirements and shipment procedures. The company says it retains human oversight and customer-specific attention. It has not automated every booking step and says work on further automation continues.
Results
In its October 26, 2026 release, the company said ocean booking agents had launched in China that August and begun managing the thousands of booking requests received each week. Agents now handle requests previously processed manually. Expansion to the rest of Asia and global operation remained future plans at the time of the announcement.
Limits and open questions
The source gives no post-launch booking automation rate, processing time or accuracy for China. About 5% refers to combined ocean and air bookings before adoption, not a result of the new ocean agents.
Sources
- C.H. Robinson Debuts Lean AI for Ocean Shipping, Air Freight and CustomsC.H. Robinson, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.