Chapter 1The Challenge

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 growth plans, 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.

Chapter 2How Salesforce Helps

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.

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.

Chapter 3The Salesforce Difference