Secret Escapes will deliver fast, 24/7 support with Agentforce.

Secret Escapes offers discounts on luxury hotels and holidays across the globe. Experts curate exclusive deals to bring its European members unforgettable travel experiences at the best price online.

A pause in travel during the pandemic raised expectations for extraordinary experiences.

Post-pandemic, pent-up demand for luxury travel is surging, and Secret Escapes is well-positioned to meet this growing demand. With millions of trips booked annually for its 60 million members, Secret Escapes offers premium, handpicked vacation experiences. By 2023, the company was scaling rapidly to serve a more diverse and expanding customer base. But as its customer base grew, so did their expectations. What had once been a brand catering primarily to seasoned travelers now attracted a younger crowd — 20- and 30-somethings eager to explore the world. Regardless of demographic, high-quality support is non-negotiable for the luxury travel business. Whether it’s pre-sale support to get its customers to the right booking, pre-travel support to get them ready for their trip (about 50% of their total inquiries), or mid-travel support to accommodate changes in plans, customers need to know that Secret Escapes is with them every step of the way.

To meet this demand, Secret Escapes needed to rethink its approach to customer experience. With 80 customer service specialists managing almost 180,000 annual contacts with needs ranging from simple to complex, the company’s existing system was stretched. Specialists had to switch between multiple systems to find the information needed to manage a growing volume of customer inquiries, such as retrieving flight details, amending bookings, or handling special requests. This complexity, combined with fluctuating customer service demand and the pressure to maintain quality KPIs, posed a significant challenge.

As the first step to address this, Secret Escapes introduced Einstein Bots in 2022, enabling self-service for common inquiries. This successfully allowed 10% of queries to be resolved automatically. However, many personalized requests still required human support. The bot’s scripted responses, while effective for general queries, weren’t always able to fully solve specific or complex traveler needs. Customer service teams still had to rely on templates to manually respond to certain queries, slowing down the overall process.

Faced with rising customer demands and increasing expectations, Secret Escapes recognized the need for a solution that could deliver personalized, high-quality support at scale — all without expanding their team or sacrificing excellent customer service.

Agentforce handles routine travel questions, giving specialists more time to focus on urgent issues.

Agentforce — the new agentic layer on the Salesforce Platform — allows Secret Escapes to automate routine tasks and simplify workflows, providing faster, more efficient customer support. 

Travel often involves last-minute requests, and Agentforce helps Secret Escapes handle these efficiently by enabling self-service for general inquiries. For instance, Agentforce can assist with special requests, such as arranging a crib in a hotel room, by providing the customer with relevant hotel contact details. For more complex or sensitive queries, Agentforce seamlessly escalates the issue to a human representative. This streamlines operations and ensures a seamless, high-quality experience for customers, with Agentforce expected to resolve 30% of customer requests through live chat autonomously.

Agentforce will also handle tasks that currently fall to customer service specialists. Processing refund requests for cancellations within the terms will be automated, allowing agents to focus on more complex issues. This will not only improve efficiency but also enhance customer satisfaction by reducing wait times for human assistance.

For more complex requests, Agentforce smoothly transfers customers to a service specialist and passes along a summary of their interaction and key details like customer preferences. For example, if a vegetarian customer asks about dining options, the specialist will already know to suggest a plant-based restaurant, ensuring a tailored experience.

"Being able to interact with Agentforce using natural language is a game changer," says Laura Meschi, Customer Experience Manager at Secret Escapes. "Service teams can create, test, and improve agents in real time, maximizing headcount and boosting support efficiency."

Secret Escapes went live with Agentforce in just two weeks, thanks to low-code tools.

The Secret Escapes team built, tested, and launched their agent in just two weeks with Agentforce, compared to the 6 months it had previously taken the company to build and train their customized Einstein Bot. 

With low-code Agent Builder tools, the team was able to easily create and configure their agent using out-of-the-box actions, as well as flows and processes they had already built in their existing Salesforce implementation. Creating the agent was similar to onboarding a new employee: Admins and Customer Service Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) played key roles in defining the topics the agent would handle, providing clear instructions in plain language, and creating actions using prompts, Apex code, flows, and APIs. The tools are designed for both admins and non-developers, allowing teams without dedicated development resources to easily build and enhance their agent. This collaboration resulted in an agent integrated with every system, including their in-house booking system, and capable of handling a wide range of customer requests.

For example, if a family needs to double-check how many personal luggage items their flight can hold or request an in-room cake upon arrival to mark a guest’s birthday, Agentforce can now help the customer handle all of the necessary requirements. Meanwhile, Agentforce can simultaneously assist other customers with equally personalized care. Looking ahead, Secret Escapes aims to make Agentforce a versatile travel assistant that works across multiple channels. Whether it's helping newlyweds book their honeymoon through live chat, making dinner reservations on the Amalfi Coast via messaging, or suggesting road trip stops in Scotland over email, Agentforce will be the first point of contact for customers. By automating the first step of customer interaction, Agentforce ensures tasks are resolved quickly and accurately, providing fast, high-quality service wherever and whenever customers need it. 

Agent Builder also made it easy to set guardrails that specified what Agentforce should avoid and when to escalate cases to a specialist. For example, if a customer experiences a medical emergency during their trip, the agent will seamlessly connect the customer with a member of the team with all the information they need to provide help quickly.

By making it easy for the Secret Escapes team to deliver value with minimal technical resources, the low-code Agentforce tools empowered them to build, test, and iterate on their agent quickly — continually improving the customer experience. “Being able to interact with Agentforce using natural language is a game-changer,” said Laura Meschi, Customer Experience Manager for Secret Escapes. “You don’t need a technical background to create an agent-first service experience. Service teams can now build, test and enhance it themselves — in real-time.”

Data Cloud helps Secret Escapes activate 50 million members’ worth of data.

One of the keys to providing the level of personalization their customers expect is Agentforce’s deep integration with Secret Escapes’ other Salesforce Platform solutions. Agentforce has access to Secret Escapes’ company and customer data in Data Cloud, such as booking records, 200+ knowledge base articles, and over 50 million member profiles in Service Cloud. Soon, Agentforce will use this information to deliver fast, accurate, and personalized support for every query. It will also enrich each customer profile with the history and context Secret Escapes needs to create unique, tailored experiences.

With Agentforce and the Salesforce Platform, Secret Escapes has enhanced customer experiences by automating routine tasks, enabling more personalized, relationship-driven interactions, and turning data into actionable insights in real time.

Agentforce, seamlessly integrated with Service Cloud and Secret Escapes' existing systems and workflows, takes on cases directly — providing on-demand answers to common questions and automating routine tasks like processing cancelations. Low-code Agent Builder tools made it possible to build and launch an autonomous agent in just two weeks, compared to the six months a traditional bot may take. 

Additionally, Data Cloud unified ‌data from over 50 million member profiles, browsing data, and booking records. Not only does this enable Secret Escapes to gain full value from their data, it gives each staff member instant access to comprehensive customer data. This helps them offer experiences and services that match the premium quality of their travel packages.