C.H. Robinson highlights progress of its AI-focused offerings with a focus on automating shipping processes

Taking steps to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to automate various types of shipping transactions conducted over e-mail, Minneapolis, Minn.-based global third-party logistics (3PL) services provider and freight forwarder C.H. Robinson (CHR) today heralded the progress it has made on that front, calling the utilization a key step in breaking “a long-standing barrier to automation.

The company added that its generative AI offerings also provide shippers using e-mail—for various freight-managing efforts like requesting a quote, tendering a load, making a pickup appointment, getting status updates—with a digitized and automated approach to those transactions.

What’s more, CHR officials noted that its AI technology is able to classify an incoming e-mail and then read and replicate the steps someone would need to take in order to fulfill a customer’s request. As an example, it observed how shippers often will still use e-mail to ask for a price quote instead of logging on to a digital platform, citing how on a typical business day, it receives more than 11,000 e-mails, for truckload freight pricing, from customers and carriers.   

“Our customers can get instant price quotes through our Navisphere platform or any of the 35 largest TMS or ERP systems we’re integrated with. But for someone like a busy warehouse manager with unexpected spot freight or freight in a new lane, an email can just feel easier. Email works the same for everybody. It doesn’t ask for your password. There are no fields to fill in,” said Mark Albrecht, Vice President for Artificial Intelligence, in a statement.  “Before generative AI, replying to that email request defied automation. Customers had to wait for a human just to pass along a quote from our Dynamic Pricing Engine. Now, our new technology reads the email and supplies the quote in an average 2 minutes 13 seconds. C.H. Robinson is doing this at scale, leaving our people more time to help those same customers with more complex requests.”        

Megan Orth, CHR Senior Director of Connectivity, told LM that there were various drivers for CHR to leverage and utilize AI technology to automate processes handled over e-mail.

“We’re devoted to serving our shippers and carriers however they want to do business with us, whether that’s directly connecting our tech to theirs, using our Navisphere website or app, or a simple email,” she said. “At the same time, we want our customers who use e-mail to get the same speed-to-market and cost savings as those customers whose transactions were already automated. E-mail isn’t going away any time soon, so the significance of this tech we created is that it can be applied to virtually any transaction conducted by e-mail.” - Orth

While traditional AI has been entrenched in CHR’s business for a long time, Orth said generative AI is “fairly new to the world,” adding that for this particular application of generative AI, it tested and learned last year, made some solid leaps in December and really started to scale up in January.

When asked about the main benefits of these AI-driven processes for CHR’s shipper customers, Orth explained that any customer who chooses to use e-mail can benefit from this.

“Our small business customers are less likely to have in-house tech that can connect to ours, so they’re heavy users of e-mail,” she said. “Our automotive customers who operate just-in-time supply chains are big users of the spot market, and any increase in speed is a win for them. Another big beneficiary are the retail suppliers we serve. Think about all the spot loads they need delivered to keep their product on store shelves after a big sale, unseasonable weather or some other fluctuation in their supply chain. It’s often easier for a busy warehouse manager with last-minute freight to shoot out an e-mail request for a quote than to log into a bunch of different transportation management systems.”   

To that end, Orth noted that the faster turnaround with an automated e-mail quote means the customer gets a more ideal match with available carriers, more competitive pricing and better appointment times for pickup and delivery.

“Speed matters, especially in the spot market,” she said. “With the new tech we created, customers don’t have to wait for a human to see the e-mail, read it, input the details about the load into our Dynamic Pricing Engine, get the quote and send it.”

CHR said its AI technology replies to 2,000 customer quote requests per day, in turn automating other transactions shippers and carriers do over e-mail. And it stated that the AI’s large language model can be trained to identify e-mails regarding load tenders, pickup appointments, or shipment tracking updates. It added that, to date, 2,268 of CHR’s truckload customers are receiving automated e-mail quotes, which enables them to more quickly secure a carrier to pick up their freight and avoid paying a premium.

The company also highlighted its work on applying AI technology to LTL price requests, which it said will benefit small business customers reliant on e-mail. And it is also working on a pilot for expedited freight price requests, for automotive customers shipping parts that are critical to just-in-time manufacturing.