OpenTable dishes out faster restaurant and diner help with Agentforce.

With a high volume of simple, recurring, inquiries, OpenTable needed to turn up the heat on customer self-service. 

OpenTable has always believed that great things happen around a restaurant table. Every day, they make it easy to reserve seats at popular restaurants via mobile or web, saving time — and phone calls — for hungry diners and busy mâitre d's. Now, with ambitious plans to more than double the number of restaurants on their platform, OpenTable is taking bold steps to elevate the way they serve their customers, which includes both diners and restaurants.

To support this growth, OpenTable needed a faster, more reliable way to answer their customers’ questions — the majority of which related to simple recurring issues like reservation changes, reward points, or account updates. While OpenTable offered knowledge articles and a basic FAQ chatbot on their website, these tools fell short of customer expectations. 

Searching OpenTable’s website for answers often returned over a dozen results, even for straightforward questions like, “How do I use my OpenTable points?” And their chatbot, while a great start, came with limitations common to most bots. It couldn’t adapt to nuance or stray from a rigid script, only escalating to a human under specific conditions that weren’t based on context. If a customer asked a multi-part question like, “Why was there a reservation I didn’t make on my account? How do I dispute that no-show charge?” the bot might answer just the first question, or say it couldn’t help at all. 

Customers often ended up calling support rather than sorting through links or hitting a chatbot dead end. This left little time for service reps to solve more complex issues or help new restaurants onboard to the platform.

Behind the scenes, disconnected systems added to the challenge. After 27 years in business, OpenTable had built and acquired a mix of platforms. While common for a fast-growing company, the result was a fragmented tech stack. Service reps spent too much time jumping between their CRM for customer info, internal tools for reservation management, and third-party systems for case history, often while customers waited on hold. It wasn’t the seamless experience OpenTable wanted to be known for.

They’re now focused on delivering global, always-on support. Whether someone’s booking a neighborhood gem or reserving a venue for a celebration, OpenTable wants every table on their platform ready to serve.

With Agentforce, OpenTable has reimagined support without reengineering systems.

Already a global leader in restaurant reservations, OpenTable deployed Agentforce — the agentic layer of the Salesforce Platform — on their website to make getting customer support across its B2B and B2C customer base as easy as booking brunch. 

They started with a restaurant-facing agent and quickly followed it up with an agent designed to help diners. Now, all customers can self-serve answers to common questions, no login required.

For example, if a restaurant wants to know how to sign up, or a diner wants to know how soon a recent restaurant visit will show in their points total, they can start a chat with Agentforce on OpenTable’s website. Agentforce will instantly respond with an accurate answer in warm, conversational language. It’s configured to tailor responses based on the user's tone for topics ranging from reservation confusion to booking guidance, account management, and point policies.

By grounding their agents on 1,500 knowledge articles stored in Service Cloud and harmonized by Data Cloud, OpenTable ensures that Agentforce always pulls from accurate, detailed information. With Data Cloud powering retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agents can quickly surface the exact detail a customer needs — even from lengthy, unstructured articles.

“Agentforce handles simple inquiries automatically, so our people can focus on delivering superior service,” said George Pokorny, Senior VP of Global Customer Success.

It took only three weeks to launch the restaurant agent on OpenTable’s Contact Us page, and it’s now resolving the majority of inquiries — a 40% improvement over their chatbot. And the new diner agent is already making a tangible difference for diners in need of support. In just a few weeks since launching Agentforce for diners, OpenTable’s AI agent has handled tens of thousands of conversations that would have otherwise required human support — efficiently resolving common questions and autonomously creating service tickets.

This smarter, more seamless experience drives customer satisfaction, loyalty, and cost savings and helps OpenTable maintain their position as a leader in the restaurant technology industry. From a restaurant asking how to update their profile, to a diner disputing a no-show, OpenTable now has the tools to respond with speed, accuracy, and empathy — every time.

The deeply unified Salesforce Platform connects OpenTable's data, tools, and teams across every touchpoint.

When a customer needs support beyond a quick answer – for example, a question related to their personal account – OpenTable’s diner agent is there to help. It understands intent, recognizes complexity, and knows exactly when — and how — to escalate a case to a service rep. For example, if a diner asks something outside of Agentforce’s scope like, “can you add missing Diner Points to my account?” it instantly routes them to the right person and shares a full transcript of the interaction so far. Seamless handoff means the rep can engage right away – no need for the customer to repeat themself. 

During business hours, if a question requires live support, the diner agent automatically transfers users to a rep and creates a case in Service Cloud. After business hours, Agentforce securely gathers key details like the diner's name and email and creates a Service Cloud case, flagged as agent-generated for next-day follow up. 

It’s all possible because Salesforce delivers a unified view of every customer, making it core to their service operations. Service Cloud powers case management and personalized outreach. Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect is OpenTable’s telephony solution for the call center, giving reps clear summaries and guided steps, so they’re never scrambling to piece together information. “Service Cloud Voice integrates everything into a single ecosystem,” said Pokorny. “Our staff will receive a clear issue summary and step-by-step guidance, making their work more efficient. We now focus on providing high-quality service rather than juggling multiple systems.”

Even non-Salesforce apps, like WhatsApp – the preferred communication channel in many countries – are natively integrated into Service Cloud via Salesforce Digital Engagement. OpenTable also uses Marketing Cloud to create personalized landing pages – for example, tailoring the experience for an independent restaurant vs. a restaurant chain – Tableau for analytics insights on app usage and bookings, and Slack for daily collaboration and problem solving.  

Because OpenTable is building on Salesforce’s deeply unified platform, they can deliver seamless, personalized experiences across every diner and restaurant interaction. With connected data and interoperable systems, their teams have the full picture to move faster – and so does their digital workforce.  OpenTable can easily enhance the AI agents they have with new actions, and spin up new agents with Agentforce Builder’s no code tools and integration with Data Cloud. 

Data Cloud indexes over 1,500 articles so agents can surface helpful content in real time.

OpenTable deployed Data Cloud to create a strong foundation for Agentforce — one that helped them move fast. It’s what powers both their diner- and restaurant-facing agents, helping them handle a high volume of inquiries with ease.

“Agentforce can answer a thousand questions at once,” Porkorny shared. “That’s something that no amount of humans can do. Agents can do more than just answer questions. They can take action and get things done.” 

Data Cloud is also the foundation of OpenTable’s bold agentic roadmap. Next up is an agent designed to handle diner requests tied to locked accounts and password resets. Down the line, the team plans to enable user authentication, which will make it possible for Agentforce to answer questions like, “What’s my points balance?” or “When’s my next reservation?”

They’re also building advanced actions into Agentforce — like letting Agentforce autonomously cancel a reservation through an API, or send users to a live URL where they can complete an action in one click.

Internally, they’re planning a sales development rep (SDR) agent to support OpenTable’s sales teams by surfacing coaching tips and real-time talking points that will help sellers bring more restaurants, bars, and venues onto the platform. The SDR agent will extend the power of digital labor to the sales floor, giving reps a smarter way to onboard partners faster.

“Data Cloud integrated more data into Agentforce, making it so much more than a support tool,” Pokorny said.

What set Salesforce apart was both the deeply unified platform, and how quickly and confidently they could put it to work. “Agentforce is hooked up to our knowledge base in Salesforce. We can tell it what to show, what not to show,” said Will Holland, Salesforce Administrator. “Just simple prompts can get us all the way here.” OpenTable partnered with Salesforce Professional Services to go from proof of concept to a live restaurant agent in less than a month. No custom code. No lengthy configuration. 

With Agentforce Builder, OpenTable had a clear path to success. Out-of-the-box actions enabled them to start fast; no code builders let them tailor Agentforce with custom flows and skills, and the Plan Tracer feature helped them test and amend responses using natural language. Building on the foundation of their restaurant agent, OpenTable worked with implementation partner Rosetree Solutions to build, test, and launch their diner agent – and went live for public use right away. 

With unified data, reps have a clearer view of each customer, and a steadier pace of work. “Having Agentforce take on more and more responsibility, getting to some more complex questions with both diners and restaurants helps us better serve both sides of the table,” said Pokorny. By modernizing with Salesforce and embracing agentic AI, OpenTable is shaping a future where digital agents aren’t just support tools, they’re a competitive advantage. As diners seek fast, personalized service, OpenTable is beating expectations with AI agents that are always on, and delivering the seamless, accurate service that today's diners will order again and again.