Transforming the way companies book and manage business travel, Engine is growing fast. After reaching double unicorn status and a $2.1 billion valuation, the company faced new challenges: Customer inquiries were climbing past 500,000 a year, teams were expanding, and speed alone was no longer enough. To maintain momentum, Engine needed clarity, alignment, and a scalable way to support both employees and customers.
Fully integrated into day-to-day workflows, Slack is the central hub where communication, applications, and operations come together. “Slack is the lifeline for Engine,” said Senior Director for Client Operations Demetri Salvaggio. “It’s our day-to-day command center.”
The team uses AI in Slack as a powerful productivity layer, helping them surface insights and take action directly in the flow of work. They’re also harnessing Agentforce, the agentic layer of the Salesforce platform, to automate manual tasks and streamline decision-making. “We’re in a period of hypergrowth, and Agentforce helps us scale efficiently while improving the customer experience,” said Salvaggio.
Slack is our digital workplace. It’s where I start my day, where I communicate, manage tasks, and collaborate across the business.
One platform to align teams, tools, and $2.1B worth of momentum
As Engine scaled, so did the complexity of its operations. With more than 100 tools in play — including Google Workspace, Asana, Salesforce, Confluence, Lattice, and Jira Help Desk — the company needed a central place to connect people, apps, and workflows. With everything tied to single sign-on, employees can access critical systems directly in Slack, without switching tabs. “Slack is the hub for everything we do,” said SVP of Operations Mollie Bodensteiner.
Slack also helps Engine stay focused and aligned across its hybrid workforce, with about half the team working remotely. Automation and clear channel structure cut down on noise, making it easier to collaborate and keep work moving. “For Engine, it’s about efficiency and keeping Slack a space for action, not clutter,” Bodensteiner said. Teams also work directly with vendors and partners in Slack Connect, avoiding the delays and disconnects of email threads.
Slack is our living knowledge base. We use it to share product releases, track work in progress, and surface institutional knowledge instantly.
An AI-powered digital workforce boosts productivity across almost 1K employees
With over 500,000 customer service inquiries a year — 60% coming through mobile chat — Engine needed to scale support without expanding headcount at the same pace. The solution started with EVA (“Engine’s Virtual Assistant”), a customer-facing AI agent built on Agentforce. EVA handles cancellation requests automatically, pulling data from Service Cloud and Engine’s booking platform to complete tasks without human involvement.
“Agentforce saves hours of manual work and lets our team focus on higher-value problems,” said Chief of Staff John Siladie.
After seeing results with EVA, Engine quickly expanded its use of agents to internal operations. The team launched an employee-facing agent inside Slack to handle IT requests including hardware access, system permissions, and troubleshooting. “The IT support agent has been a game-changer,” said Bodensteiner. “It reduces repetitive questions, cuts ticket volume, and gives managers back valuable time.”
The same agent also helps onboard new employees by listing required systems in the right order, and will soon integrate with Jira to automate ticket creation. “That’s where it gets exciting,” said Salvaggio. “We’re removing low-touch, repetitive tasks from human queues so people can focus where they’re needed most.”
And with the move to Slack’s highest-tier plan, Engine now has access to AI in Slack and a whole new host of features, like daily recaps and file summaries. Importantly, teams can tap into enterprise search, giving them the ability to expand search queries by finding and surfacing data across all of Engine’s applications, databases, and business systems. “AI in Slack is our internal unlock,” said Siladie. “It connects information across Slack, Confluence, Salesforce, and more, enabling our people to get answers instantly and keep moving.”
Slack has become my first stop when I’m looking for knowledge or information. Over time, as more history builds up, it naturally becomes a go-to source. With AI in Slack and enterprise search, it’s even more powerful and surfaces answers faster.
Why Engine relies on Salesforce to move fast without risk
“At Engine, AI adoption starts with leadership and culture,” said Salvaggio. That culture is grounded in a test-learn-scale mindset that the team proved by launching EVA in just 12 days.
Engine’s ability to move quickly is powered by Salesforce. Its unified platform — combining Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, and the Einstein Trust Layer — gives Engine a secure and flexible foundation for building AI into everyday work. “Agentforce is how we maximize efficiency,” said Director of GTM Systems Joshua Stern. “It gives people time back in their day so they’re not stuck handling tasks that don’t require human input.”
After success with its IT agent, Engine is now working to make it even more powerful by enabling it to take autonomous actions directly in Slack, like creating Jira tickets, triggering approvals, and handling escalations. They’re also exploring HR agents to extend that success into other departments.
Looking ahead, Engine’s long-term vision is to give every employee their own AI assistant inside Slack — one that knows their role, connects to the right systems, answers questions, and takes action. “We’re building for scale, not just speed,” said Bodensteiner. “Slack and Salesforce give us the structure to automate the work that slows people down and the flexibility to keep innovating as we grow.”
