RTL+: Smart Customer Service on WhatsApp with Agentforce
Customer Story
AI in Customer Service: From MVP to Streaming Buddy
The RTL+ streaming service has grown in just a few years from around 250,000 to more than seven million paying subscribers. With this growth, expectations for fast, reliable customer service have also increased – especially during live events or major show formats, when issues need to be resolved immediately.
Against this backdrop, RTL+, together with Salesfive, has introduced an AI-powered service based on Salesforce Agentforce. This directly builds on the company’s existing automation strategy. It is available via WhatsApp and purposefully expands already established service and automation solutions with additional capabilities.
The goal was to more closely connect automation and a personalized customer experience. To achieve this, a lean MVP was launched, delivering quick results and allowing for iterative development.
The AI agent supports customers around the clock and can – depending on the use case – also handle more complex requests. The scope of features and capabilities will be expanded step by step through additional data integrations.
This is how the vision of a Streaming Buddy gradually takes shape – an intelligent, personalized service companion that not only responds to requests, but increasingly provides proactive support, offers recommendations, and resolves issues independently.
Overview
This was implemented
RTL+ built, together with Salesfive, an AI-powered WhatsApp service that supports customers around the clock with complex inquiries and paves the way for a personalized streaming buddy.
Implementation of Salesforce Agentforce on the existing Service Cloud
Introduction of WhatsApp as a new customer service channel
Setup of Salesforce Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud)
AI-powered quality monitoring and reporting in customer service
Technologies
These Technologies Were Used
Systems are only as good as the technology behind them. That‘s why we rely on modern solutions from the Salesforce ecosystem for our customers‘ digitization projects. The following technologies, among others, were used at RTL+.
Data 360
Connect your data to the Data 360 and make better decisions – for more efficient marketing, sales, and service processes.
“With Agentforce, we’re strategically advancing our automation – toward a more personalized, context-driven customer experience.”
Challenges
How Things Started
RTL+ wanted to scale customer service quickly and cost-effectively. At the same time, service quality needed to remain consistently high, even with high interaction volumes. In addition, distributed customer data had to be integrated in order to offer even more personalized and automated service use cases in the future.
As subscriber numbers grow, so do support requests, particularly during live sports, shows and series premieres. Customers expect immediate assistance when something goes wrong with their streaming. However, traditional contact centre structures have limited scalability. RTL+ therefore adopted an approach designed to provide fast, reliable and cost-effective support on a long-term basis.
Customer service had previously been handled primarily via email. However, this channel is relatively slow and costly. RTL+ had already seen strong results with AI-powered chatbots, particularly in automating FAQ-driven queries. Building on this success, the aim was to automate more complex service cases and integrate them more closely into the existing Salesforce ecosystem. For RTL+, this is a key prerequisite for delivering empathetic, personalised and customer-centric support.
An AI agent’s responses must be just as reliable as those of human staff. However, with thousands of daily interactions, it is not feasible to review every response manually. RTL+ therefore needed to introduce new monitoring mechanisms to systematically evaluate responses, identify patterns and continuously drive improvements.
To deliver a personalised customer experience, the AI agent needs access to a wide range of customer data. However, much of the relevant information – such as usage patterns or contract details – sits outside the existing Salesforce ecosystem. Making this data accessible and integrating it effectively is key to the next phase of the project.
“The foundation for any effective personalization and AI is the availability and integration of customer data. That’s why, in the next expansion phase, we will focus on systematically unlocking this data and making it usable for the AI agent.”
Solution
The Project Success in Detail
With WhatsApp, Salesfive and RTL+ introduced an entirely new customer service channel that complements existing email support. Building on this, the Salesforce Service Agent enables customers to get help anytime, directly via their smartphone, while they are streaming content.
AI service directly in Messenger
Salesfive and RTL+ integrated Agentforce directly into WhatsApp. RTL+ deliberately chose WhatsApp as a new channel because many users use their smartphone as a second screen. This allows you to request help quickly while streaming. The agent answers questions, helps with issues, and is available around the clock.
Custom development of the AI agent
The AI agent is based on the Salesforce Service Agent Framework and is specifically tailored to RTL+’s requirements. To achieve this, Salesfive’s experts defined new service processes using an iterative test-and-learn approach and continuously refined prompting and logic. This enabled the agent to reliably understand and resolve relevant requests.
Intelligent automation instead of an FAQ bot
RTL+ is achieving a new level of automation with Agentforce. Instead of static decision trees, the AI agent understands requests in context and can independently answer even complex questions. RTL+ places strong emphasis on reducing unjustified escalations to human service agents. Handover rate and cost per contact were significantly reduced, demonstrating a clear economic impact already in the MVP.
AI-powered quality monitoring
RTL+ uses analysis and reporting capabilities in Salesforce to gain a structured overview of the quality of AI responses and identify patterns. Anomalies are pinpointed and used to derive targeted optimizations. At the same time, results are continuously benchmarked against internal KPIs to ensure transparency and reliability. This creates a scalable quality management approach that combines automated analytics with targeted manual review.
MVP for quick results
RTL+ deliberately pursued an MVP approach to quickly gather real customer experience and then scale in a data-driven way based on it. RTL+ therefore initially focused on a clearly defined use case. The insights gained flowed directly into the joint further development with Salesfive. With this approach, the AI agent was able to go live quickly and can now be expanded in a meaningful way—both in terms of content and commercial value.
Expansion into a data-driven service platform
In the next project phase, the AI agent will be expanded to include additional data sources, including those outside the Salesforce platform. The goal is to integrate external customer data to enable personalized recommendations and automated actions. In the long term, RTL+ Customer Service will evolve into an intelligent streaming buddy that provides proactive support and sustainably enhances the customer experience.
“The collaboration with Salesfive was extremely close and truly collaborative. I found it particularly valuable that Salesfive actively challenged our ideas as well. In a dynamic environment like AI projects, it’s precisely this honest, expert exchange that is crucial to achieving lasting impact.”
RTL+ Interview: Using AI to Create Your Streaming Buddy
RTL+ is setting new benchmarks in customer service. Christian Achatzi, Media Partner at Salesfive, spoke with Christiane Konrad, Vice President CRM & Customer Care at RTL+, about the project.
Company
About RTL+
RTL+ is the streaming service of RTL Deutschland and is one of the leading entertainment platforms in the German-speaking market. The offering includes series, shows, reality formats, movies, and extensive live sports coverage. In recent years, the platform has grown significantly and today reaches millions of paying subscribers. Alongside high-quality content, RTL+ places a strong focus on innovations in customer experience, data, and AI to provide viewers with a personalized and consistently compelling streaming experience. This strengthens customer loyalty and enables the company to continuously develop new digital service experiences for users worldwide.
Want to strengthen your customer service?
Automate your customer communications with Salesforce Agentforce, tailored to your company’s requirements. Our experts are here to support you!
More Inspiring Customer Stories
evo: New customer portal with stable integration for better service
A modern portal, integrated processes, and real-time data: With the new Salesforce solution, evo offers its customers easy access to all services, from contract conclusion to meter reading entry.
Phoenix Contact connects global teams with Salesforce
Thanks to a centralized Salesforce platform at Phoenix Contact, more companies than ever before can now work together globally and innovatively.
Copart optimizes customer journeys for successful marketing
Copart uses Salesforce Marketing Cloud to create scalable processes, personalized customer journeys, and responsive templates, thereby delivering a consistent customer experience.