Mumbai, India — April 15, 2025 Salesforce, a leading AI CRM company, announced the expansion of its collaboration with Air India with the adoption of Salesforce Agentforce. As part of its ongoing digital transformation, Air India is among the first airlines to go-live with Agentforce, leveraging it to automate key customer service processes.
Air India has been a long-standing Salesforce customer, using Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Data Cloud and Einstein AI to power its customer engagement and business operations. The latest expansion marks a strategic step towards becoming an AI-infused airline, focused on delivering seamless, responsive, and personalised experiences for its passengers using emerging agentic AI technologies bolstered by its extensive data fabric.
Use Case: Refund Requests
The first Agentforce use case is customer refunds. Customers now benefit from faster resolutions, timely refund processing, and proactive updates.
Dr. Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Air India said the first use case for Agentforce was customer refunds. Previously, it was done manually and involved a lot of steps. Agentforce reduced that from several days to a few hours.
“Starting with transforming how we manage certain classes of refund cases using cutting-edge Agentic AI — drastically reducing resolution times. For our guests, this means instant acknowledgment of these claims with real-time updates and a seamless experience across all touchpoints, reinforcing trust and valuing their loyalty. This isn’t just a technological leap—it’s a customer-first commitment, delivering faster, smarter, and more empathetic service to our valued guests at every step,” Dr. Ramaswamy said.
By deploying Salesforce Agentforce, Air India is reimagining this process through adoption of agentic AI. The solution streamlines and accelerates the end-to-end handling of such requests — automating routine steps, reducing human effort, and enabling agents to focus on higher-value interactions.
Customers now benefit from faster resolutions, timely refund processing, and proactive updates.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, President & CEO at Salesforce – South Asia, said, “Agentforce represents the next frontier of customer service — where AI works alongside humans to deliver faster, smarter, and more personalized experiences at scale. With its adoption of Agentforce, Air India is setting a new benchmark for modern, AI-driven customer engagement in the aviation industry globally. Their vision of becoming an AI-first airline aligns perfectly with Salesforce’s commitment to help businesses automate at scale, deliver faster service, and foster loyalty through every interaction.”
Also see: The Rise of AI Agents in Business
The Flightpath Ahead
Air India plans to scale the use of Agentforce across other contact center operations and customer touchpoints, including voice-based interactions, over the next several months.
Dr. Ramaswamy also said that the merger between Vistara Airlines and Air India is complete and “went smoothly”. Around 2.5 lakh customer reservations were transferred from Vistara to Air India.
During the merger, Service Cloud was merged between the two airlines’ infrastructure.
Air India is about to complete the third year of its five-year digital transformation journey dubbed Vihaan.AI.
It developed a new mobile app and chatbot and revamped its website. According to Dr. Ramaswamy, the GenAI chatbot received 9 million customer queries and responded to 70% of the questions with a 97% containment ratio.
Powering Air India’s Digital Transformation
Agentforce complements Air India’s broader digital transformation roadmap, where Salesforce continues to be a trusted technology partner. Beyond Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, Air India already leverages Salesforce Data Cloud to unify customer data and Einstein AI to drive insights and personalization across the customer journey.
As the airline accelerates its transformation journey, future deployments of Agentforce, including AI-driven voice capabilities, are expected to further strengthen Air India’s customer engagement strategy.
Air India has 140 systems in the backend, and Agentforce will play a significant role in transforming these systems.
India’s national airline, which is now privately owned by the Tata Group, will next revamp its in-flight entertainment systems on its aircraft.
