Atlantic City Casino unifies CX with Zendesk and AI

A customer-centric brand that evolves in the digital world

Atlantic City Casino is a Peruvian-based entertainment company recognized as one of the leading casinos in the region. With a dynamic operation and a strong focus on customer service excellence, the company offers a comprehensive gaming and entertainment experience for a diverse audience. Guided by a commitment to providing unique moments of fun, Atlantic City Casino continually strives to innovate in technology and services to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Atlantic City builds its entire operation around its customers and seeks to deliver what they call an unforgettable experience, both in its land-based casinos and online. As the business expanded beyond its traditional gaming floors, maintaining that level of warmth and personal attention became a core priority for the customer experience team.

The shift from physical to digital accelerated in 2020, when the pandemic prompted Atlantic City to view online gaming as an opportunity, not just a secondary channel. The company moved quickly, migrating customers accustomed to visiting its brick-and-mortar casinos, many of them over the age of 50, to a digital environment. This required extensive training on digital processes such as deposits and account management.

During this transition, the customer experience function became a strategic pillar. “We are responsible for designing, scaling, and protecting our customers’ experience in the digital environment, ensuring agile, personalized support without losing the close relationship that characterizes us in the physical world,” explains Laura Baca, Head of Customer Experience.

The need to preserve that close relationship on a large scale paved the way for a new generation of tools.

From fragmented tools to a unified vision

As online operations grew, Atlantic City quickly realized that its traditional support model couldn’t keep pace. The various channels ran on separate systems, and agents lacked a comprehensive view of customer interactions. This limited both service quality and the organization’s ability to make data-driven decisions.

Before Zendesk, the team managed chat and phone in one environment, email in another, and used a separate system for calls. There was no unified customer history. “If a customer contacted us via chat, we couldn’t see if they had already emailed us, or vice versa ,” explains Baca. The CRM wasn’t integrated, making it difficult to categorize the reasons for contact, and rigid queues resulted in long wait times and limited visibility for supervisors.

Reporting was also limited, which hampered strategic management just as the business was growing rapidly. From 2020 to 2024, Atlantic City’s customer base grew by nearly 60 percent. With the previous setup, the support team would have needed to increase its staff by 70 percent to meet the demand.

For Hugo Quisquiche, Online Support Supervisor at Atlantic City, omnichannel support became an essential requirement. “The term omnichannel started to gain traction when we began looking for a change, and Zendesk gave us complete management of all channels,” he says. The goal was to be 100 percent omnichannel in support, with all chats, emails, calls, and AI agents managed from a single platform, and to have a complete view of every interaction.

The choice of Zendesk as a strategic platform

With these challenges in mind, Atlantic City sought a more robust and scalable platform focused on the guest experience. Zendesk met these requirements by offering an omnichannel platform and an AI agent in a single environment. “We were looking for a robust, scalable, and experience-focused platform, something that would set Atlantic City apart,” says Maria Santome, Online Support Supervisor. With Zendesk, the team was able to consolidate all interactions, intelligently automate processes, and base decisions on clear, real-time data.

The company initially adopted Zendesk’s Professional license, which allowed them to set up AI agents, manage the help center, and create custom metrics and dashboards without relying on external providers. This autonomy was especially important in an agile digital business where information changes frequently and customers expect up-to-date answers.

Now, Atlantic City is preparing to move forward by taking the next step toward licensing Zendesk AI Agents to access generative artificial intelligence capabilities. The team sees this evolution as a way to deepen personalization, strengthen loyalty, and further refine the guest experience.

Scaling with artificial intelligence without losing the human touch

Artificial intelligence became a core strategy for Atlantic City in 2024. The volume of interactions and the number of guests on the online platform grew exponentially, and the team needed to be more efficient without losing the essence of the brand.

The company implemented an AI agent, working with partner InferenceLabs9 and leveraging Zendesk’s capabilities. The AI agent focuses on handling high-volume segments and common inquiries, while the integrated help center allows guests to self-serve with curated articles and information. “The AI ​​solution was very quick to implement. It helped us from day one and continues to help us to this day,” says Baca.

Supervisory roles are now divided between AI and operations. One side focuses on Ai agent workflows, response quality, and deviation and containment rates. The other oversees Zendesk operations, including SLAs, queues, schedules, and agent performance. “These two sides ensure a balance between automation, control, and the experience we offer our guests,” explains Santome.

For Quisquiche, the key benefit is efficiency without sacrificing empathy. “It’s a very intuitive, practical, and easy-to-use tool,” he says. Guests receive immediate answers through the AI agent and the help center, and when they need a human, agents can see the entire history, avoiding repeating questions, and reconstructing the context. This hybrid model combines the speed of AI with human understanding, aligning with Atlantic City’s values.

Service based on data and measurable results

With Zendesk, Atlantic City transformed its operation into a truly data-driven function. The team uses detailed insights to understand customer behavior, optimize processes, and position support as a retention lever, not just a resolution function.

They can now see preferred channels, recurring reasons for contact, and patterns across segments. With this information, they prioritize guests, personalize responses, and focus on long-term relationships.

The impact is reflected in the numbers. Monthly interactions fell from nearly 19,000 to 8,700, without increasing the number of support agents. Contacts per unique customer dropped from 1.5 to 0.40, below the internal target of 1, indicating that more customers are resolving their needs in a single interaction.

Customer satisfaction more than doubled, rising from approximately 30 percent to 67-68 percent, with a higher survey response rate. “We’ve doubled customer satisfaction in a short time and are now aiming for 70 percent to 75 percent,” says Quisquiche. At the same time, the AI agent handles about 75 percent of the interaction before reaching an agent, saving hours of manual work, reducing costs, and allowing agents to focus on complex, high-value cases.

Looking ahead with AI and a trusted partner

The progress made in 2025 laid a solid foundation for Atlantic City’s next phase. The company is moving toward a more predictive use of data, helping multiple teams design projects and improvements to the website and other touchpoints. The team also plans closer integration between customer support and the sales team, including opening new channels for sales teams to manage their portfolios more effectively in 2026.

The goal is to use the AI agent and Zendesk settings to anticipate needs, support loyalty, and reinforce the brand’s promise of delivering an unforgettable experience.

For Baca, Zendesk is clearly more than just a tool. “We are very happy and satisfied with Zendesk, not only at the team level, but also at the board and senior management levels,” she concludes. With a strong partnership, a clear strategy, and a focus on AI and omnichannel experiences, Atlantic City is well-positioned to continue growing without losing sight of the guests who are at the heart of its brand.