TSA’s Ace AI Agent Handles 100,000 Traveler Questions a Month, Salesforce Says

The Transportation Security Administration has deployed Ace, an AI agent built on Salesforce’s Public Sector Solutions, to answer travelers’ questions about airport security. Since going live during the summer travel surge, Ace has handled about 100,000 routine conversations a month and resolved 96% of routine inquiries without escalating to a person, Salesforce said. Typical questions include how to pack liquids and how to get through a checkpoint with a medical device.

“Nearly three million people travel through U.S. airports every day, and a simple question shouldn’t stand between them and a smooth trip,” said Kendall Collins, CEO of Missionforce and Government Cloud at Salesforce.

How Ace works

Ace is available on tsa.gov and in the myTSA app. Its answers come from the TSA website and more than 550 knowledge articles, Paul Tatum, Salesforce’s executive vice president of global public sector solutions, told Nextgov/FCW. In the publication’s own test, Ace correctly answered a basic question about bringing liquids through Dulles International Airport. More complicated questions go to a live TSA agent along with an AI-generated case summary.

Ace wasn’t a standalone project. The TSA’s Customer Experience Branch first built two applications on the FedRAMP-authorized Salesforce Government Cloud. A Customer Service Managers app pulls passenger email, phone and social media inquiries into one place, with AI summaries of case histories. The TSA Cares app routes requests from travelers with medical conditions to the contact center and regional coordination teams. Those apps created the data foundation the agent now draws on.

The claimed savings

The savings figures come from Salesforce. It says consumer interactions used to cost more than $4 each, and Ace has cut that cost by more than 90% “without sacrificing service quality.” The company projects 70,000 internal data-sharing transactions a year will be automated. Each used to take 10 minutes, so that frees more than 11,660 staff hours. Salesforce estimates the TSA’s applications will save $11 million over three years. It also says the agency had needed the equivalent of 12 full-time employees to handle excess workloads.

“If we can help the traveling public easily access accurate, timely information, we can help alleviate stress in the field on travel days and increase the TSA’s overall effectiveness,” said Niki French, customer experience branch manager in TSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties, Ombudsman and Traveler Engagement.

For other agencies and large service organizations, the TSA’s order is the useful part. It unified case data and workflows first, then put an agent on top of them, and it hands off anything complex to a person with a summary attached.