Challenge

Ralali’s growth meant that there were more merchant and supplier inquiries requiring their customer support team’s attention. Ralali handled support solely through emails and phone calls. The ensuing back-and-forth was time-consuming, with long wait times for dispute resolution and channels not in sync.

Additionally, Ralali only sent notifications — for new orders, requests for quotes, or new chats — through either email, SMS, or the Ralali app. SMS deliverability to suppliers was low, and some suppliers did not open their emails. Ralali also noticed delays in push notification delivery because merchants used low-end smartphones that delayed these notifications.

Solution

Ralali discovered that Bird could help them use WhatsApp and Inbox to solve their customer support needs:

• Inbox allows Ralali’s agents to see messages from WhatsApp in one place, minimizing the number of missed support tickets.

• Ralali uses WhatsApp chatbots to resolve recurring inquiries, configured with a menu with predefined answers to frequently asked questions.

• With Inbox, Ralali set up a service and tech support “hotline” for dispute resolution. Ralali’s support team resolved onboarding difficulties and app or transaction errors faster through chats. 

How it looks

Sending automatic notifications through WhatsApp also helped suppliers increase sales and payment collection.

Ralali uses Flow Builder to send automated notifications at different stages of their suppliers’ journey to increase engagement with merchants and help them increase sales. For example, when suppliers get a new quote request from a buyer, a WhatsApp notification accelerates their reply to the buyer.

Additionally, Ralali set up payment reminders via WhatsApp, giving suppliers a 2- to 3-day grace period to complete a payment after purchase. These WhatsApp reminders curbed late payments.

Results

Inbox allowed Ralali to improve its first response time (FRT) to supplier and merchant inquiries. Before Bird, their average FRT was 30 minutes. Now that number is now less than 10 minutes — and still improving. Plus, each support team member can handle 10 times more tickets through WhatsApp than email.

Bird’s WhatsApp automation and messaging also help Ralali’s small support team serve 22,000 suppliers and 1.5 million merchants on their platform efficiently.

Ralali’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a testament to this efficiency. In the time since Ralali has implemented Bird, its NPS has risen from 6 to 8.5.

“Users who interact with us via WhatsApp grow faster in Ralali. For every email the support team handles, they can respond ten WhatsApp messages. Each customer support agent can also see what the other agents are working on, reducing support conflict and improving agent productivity."

Irwan Suryady, CTO at Ralali