Customer story
Ralali
Indonesia's B2B marketplace cut first-response time by 66% — from 30 minutes to under 10 — by moving merchant and supplier support to WhatsApp with Bird.
Sector
B2B marketplace
Channels
Headline
66% lower first-response time
The challenge
Email and phone support that couldn't keep pace with growth.
Ralali is an Indonesian B2B marketplace founded in 2013 that connects suppliers with local merchants. With over 22,000 suppliers and 1.5 million merchants buying on Ralali, growth meant more merchant and supplier inquiries requiring the 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. Notifications — for new orders, requests for quotes, or new chats — went out through email, SMS, or the Ralali app, but SMS deliverability to suppliers was low, some suppliers did not open their emails, and push notifications were delayed on the low-end smartphones merchants used.
The solution
WhatsApp and Inbox, unifying support in one place.
Ralali discovered that Bird could help them use WhatsApp and Inbox to solve their customer support needs.
- Inbox in one place.Inbox lets Ralali's agents see messages from WhatsApp in one place, minimizing the number of missed support tickets.
- Chatbots for recurring inquiries. Ralali uses WhatsApp chatbots to resolve recurring inquiries, configured with a menu of predefined answers to frequently asked questions.
- A dispute-resolution hotline.With Inbox, Ralali set up a service and tech support "hotline" for dispute resolution, resolving onboarding difficulties and app or transaction errors faster through chats.
How it works
Automated WhatsApp notifications across the supplier journey.
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.
Ralali also 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.
The results
Faster responses, more tickets, and a rising NPS.
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 less than 10 minutes — and still improving. Each support team member can handle 10 times more tickets through WhatsApp than email, helping Ralali's small support team serve 22,000 suppliers and 1.5 million merchants efficiently. In the time since Ralali implemented Bird, its Net Promoter Score has risen from 6 to 8.5.
66%
Decrease in first-response time, from 30 minutes to under 10.
22,000+
Suppliers engaging on the platform, alongside 1.5 million merchants.
8.5
NPS score for WhatsApp, up from 6 since implementing Bird.
“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, Ralali
Carry-forward reference from bird.com. Metrics and named quotes reported by Ralali.
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