Southwest Airlines® gives every traveler always-on service with Agentforce

Routine questions, costly channels

Southwest Airlines® offers friendly, reliable, low-cost flights and carries more nonstop domestic travelers than any other U.S. airline. Their team of more than 2,600 service reps handles more than 20 million customer inquiries each year across phone, mobile app, and web chat.

Many inquiries were routine questions about baggage restrictions, reservations, refunds, or the Southwest Airlines loyalty program, Rapid Rewards®. While straightforward to answer, they took valuable time away from cases requiring expertise, like rebooking a family after a missed connection. Complex cases often required reps to leave their service console, consult other teams, and repeat customer information.

Southwest saw an opportunity to make everyday support instantly available while giving reps more time for the requests that require human expertise.

Always-on help for every traveler 

Southwest built an always-on Agentforce assistant into the Help Center on their website and mobile app, giving travelers an easy way to get questions answered. The assistant responds in seconds and brings reps into the conversation whenever additional help is needed.

For example, a traveler with an upcoming trip can ask about baggage limits, policies, refunds, reservations, or the Rapid Rewards loyalty program and receive approved answers directly in chat. When a request requires action instead of information, Agentforce securely directs travelers to the appropriate experience to update a reservation, change a ticket, report a lost bag, or connect rewards to an existing flight. During major disruptions, Agentforce can also help guide eligible travelers to rebook canceled flights.

If Agentforce cannot resolve an issue, it automatically helps the traveler request a callback. "Southwest wins by putting our customers first, but what that looks like continues to evolve," said Stephen Berkowitz, Senior Manager, Customer Technology. "Today, that means meeting customers where they are and giving them more flexibility in how they interact with us. Agentforce adds another channel for Customers to engage with Southwest, helping us provide support when and where it's most convenient for them."

Built on trusted systems

Every conversation starts with trusted knowledge. Agentforce is grounded in Southwest's approved knowledge base and customer service data in Agentforce Service, ensuring every response stays within airline-approved information. Agentforce answers only what it knows, reasoning across approved content to provide answers directly in chat. When customers need to complete authenticated tasks such as changing a reservation or updating a booking, Agentforce securely deep-links them to Southwest's booking website for self-service.

If a customer needs additional help, the conversation continues without interruption. Enhanced Chat, an Agentforce Service feature, carries the full conversation from Southwest's website or mobile app directly into each rep's service console, so customers never have to start over or repeat information. When Agentforce can't resolve an issue, it escalates the case to a rep through Agentforce Service for rep follow-up.

Built-in guardrails allow Agentforce to ask for clarification no more than twice before escalating to a human, while conversations involving safety concerns, legal issues, or other predefined scenarios are immediately handed off to a CARE Representative. Agentforce Observability tracks agent behavior and escalation patterns so Southwest can continuously refine prompts and improve how Agentforce handles ambiguous requests. 

Faster answers at lower cost

Southwest began introducing Agentforce in November 2025, giving teams time to validate the experience before expanding it to more travelers.

"We did a phased rollout, which is always the best approach for a new technology," said Sarah McDonald, Senior Technology Consultant. "This was our first agentic AI rollout at Southwest so it had to be perfect for customers. We saw an immediate, substantial increase in KPIs across the board."

Since launch, Agentforce has resolved nearly half of eligible customer inquiries without human intervention, delivering a 45% case resolution rate across more than 2 million customer interactions. 

The improvement has already increased customer satisfaction by 900%, and is expected to generate $6 million in projected annual savings – a seven-fold return on investment.

Southwest's long-term goal is to shift half of their annual contact volume to Agentforce, allowing reps to spend more time helping travelers with the moments that require human expertise.