How Traveloka built a better brand experience by moving its email and WhatsApp messaging to Bird
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As Traveloka’s team sought out solutions to improve its email and WhatsApp channels, Bird was identified as a top option because of its ability to optimize both channels through a single platform.
Established in Indonesia in 2012, Traveloka has expanded to five Southeast Asian countries: Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The travel platform provides 24/7 customer service in local languages and takes more than 40 different local payment methods. The Traveloka app has been downloaded more than 134 million times, making it the most popular travel platform in Southeast Asia.
“One of the strengths of the Traveloka brand is our ability to deliver a great customer experience across many different languages, currencies, and borders within Southeast Asia,” says Traveloka. “As we expand our operations to Australia and beyond, we are committed to maintaining our reputation for delivering personalized service at scale.”
The problem: Inefficient communication, at the expense of the customer experience
Traveloka’s customer service agents rely on email, WhatsApp, and other digital channels to communicate with customers. Timely communication across all channels is critical to supporting their customers before, during, and after their planned travel.
Many customer service inquiries are related to time-sensitive situations—including disrupted travel plans, transportation issues, and booking challenges—that require a fast response. Inefficient and unreliable communications can frustrate existing customers, damage Traveloka’s reputation, and lead to increased customer churn.
Each of Traveloka’s CS communication channels presented its own challenges. The platform’s existing email service provider offered competent deliverability rates, but its cost-per-unit was high and the vendor’s ability to optimize deliverability was limited. While the company also set up WhatsApp as a communication channel, it was using an API-based solution that did not allow for two-way conversations with customers.
“Bird is one of our most efficient partners, providing us with a service that allows us to work more effectively and maximize our investment” says Traveloka Team. “We are now using Bird’s Deliverability Audit service, which enhances our inbox rate, ensuring our users consistently receive transactional updates and the latest promotional information if subscribed.”
The solution: The right tools to improve email and WhatsApp ROI
As Traveloka’s team sought out solutions to improve its email and WhatsApp channels, Bird was identified as a top option because of its ability to optimize both channels through a single platform.
“Bird’s suite of capabilities across email and WhatsApp was a perfect fit for our needs,” says Traveloka Team. “As we explored Bird’s platform and learned more about its features, we discovered even more opportunities and benefits that we weren’t necessarily searching for.”
Streamlined customer interactions through Flows
Time-to-resolution is a critical data point when evaluating customer service performance. Faster interactions reduce interaction times and increase the number of tickets an agent is able to handle on a given day.
A faster time-to-resolution is also good for customer satisfaction—especially when customers are facing high-stress, time-sensitive travel situations and want their problems addressed as quickly as possible. Through Bird Flows, Traveloka was able to build a custom bot to streamline these sessions by interacting with customers at the start of a CS session to understand the user’s problem or intentions before handing off the interaction to an agent.
By the time the agent connects with the customer, the bot has already created an order creation flow to facilitate a quick resolution.
Reliable deliverability—at a lower cost
Chasing the lowest per-message price for email deliverability is a risky endeavor: prioritize cost too much and you’ll end up placing your email program in the hands of a disreputable ESP who overpromises on deliverability and refuses to disclose the results.
Traveloka was already seeing strong numbers for its email deliverability, and it didn’t want to jeopardize that performance in exchange for lower email expenses. Instead, it wanted an efficient email platform that could maintain or beat those deliverability numbers while reining in the company’s sending costs.
“Our top priority with email was improving our per-message cost while maintaining a high delivery rate,” says Traveloka Team. “The Bird team supported us step by step with the integration and volume ramp-up process, ensuring that our email reputation was sufficient before blasting at high volume.”
A proof-of-concept for order creation
One of Traveloka’s biggest draws to Bird was its ability to provide an interface for order creation that didn’t require users to download an app. Bird allowed the company to create a proof-of-concept (POC) for WhatsApp that demonstrated how the messaging channel could facilitate order creation through a complex Flow.
By eliminating the extra step of downloading the Traveloka app, the company’s POC eliminated a critical barrier slowing down customers who need to connect with the company’s customer service department as quickly as possible.
The result: A user-friendly messaging experience
By partnering with Bird, Traveloka took two underperforming—and underutilized—communication channels and used them to elevate the company’s entire brand experience.
The travel platform also invested in its own future: as it grows its user base and expands into new regions, Traveloka’s investment into better email and WhatsApp messaging will be capable of supporting a strong customer experience at scale.
Faster resolution for incoming customer queries
Thanks to two-way communication and a custom CS bot, Bird’s flow builder has equipped Traveloka with an efficient, scalable solution that gives its customers a more responsive and personalized user experience.
Traveloka users now have the flexibility to get in touch with the platform’s customer service team through either the company’s app or its WhatsApp channel, reducing the friction that impedes their ability to get in touch when they need an agent’s assistance.
Better ROI for transactional and marketing emails
By moving its email program to Bird, Traveloka is now seeing greater efficiency for its transactional and marketing emails, including more reliable delivery for time-sensitive messages. The company achieved its goal of controlling messaging costs while maintaining high deliverability, maximizing its email investment.
Looking ahead: Raising the bar for email performance
Although Traveloka was already satisfied with its email deliverability, the company is eager to use Bird’s platform to push that performance even higher.
The company is currently using Bird’s deliverability audit service to enhance its inbox rate. Given the importance of certain transactional and time-sensitive messages sent to Traveloka users, improved inboxing will ensure that customers are getting the messages they need and in a timely manner.
Improved deliverability will also help Traveloka’s marketing team deliver promotional messages and other time-sensitive content to subscribers as they continue to increase brand affinity with their customers.
About Bird
Bird is an AI-first CRM for marketing, services, and payments.
Our mission is to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend. We power communication between businesses and their customers — across any channel, always with the right context, and on every corner of the planet. If you’ve ever ordered takeaway, returned a package, contacted customer service, or requested a login code, it’s almost guaranteed your interactions have been powered by Bird’s technology.
Our platform, our applications and our APIs help businesses streamline conversations through their customers’ preferred channels — like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Voice, WeChat, Messenger, Instagram - and build powerful and engaging experiences. Bird's out of the box functionality and omnichannel expertise tips the scales for knowledge workers and helps them be productive right away, with tools to build great marketing campaigns, customer service experiences, or automated business processes.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, Bird processes over 6.5 trillion interactions for 50,000+ customers, including Google, Facebook, and Uber.
About Traveloka
Traveloka is Southeast Asia’s leading travel platform that enables consumers to access, discover, and purchase a wide range of travel products. Its product selection encompasses transport bookings for flights, buses, trains, and car rentals, along with airport transfers. The company provide a wide array of accommodation options, including hotels, apartments, guest houses, homestays, resorts, and villas. Additionally, Traveloka offers cruises, travel packages, along with variety of local attractions to enhance travelers’ experience, such as theme parks, museums, day tours, and more.
Established in Indonesia in 2012, the company also operates in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and the Philippines. Traveloka offers 24/7 customer support in local languages and accepts over 30 different local payment methods. The Traveloka app has been downloaded more than 130 million times and boasts over 40 million monthly active user, making it one of the most popular travel app in the region.
