About Ola

Ola, India’s first and largest cab aggregator, integrates transportation for customers and driver-partners onto mobile technology platform. As one of India’s fastest growing companies they ensure convenient, transparent and quick service fulfilment using technology to make transportation
hassle-free for everyone.

Ola’s offerings on its platform ranges from affordable AC cabs on the Ola Micro range to the superior luxury offering from Ola Lux as well as localized offerings like the ubiquitous Auto-rickshaws to Shuttle buses for daily commute. Ola is known to innovate and display a greater understanding of the ecosystem which made them add a fleet of ride options to its customers making it convenient and budget-friendly like Ola share, Ola outstation, Ola rentals etc.

Using the Ola mobile app, users across 110 cities can conveniently book from over 600,000 vehicles available to them. Ola has empowered hundreds of thousands of driver-partners as entrepreneurs, by building an ecosystem encompassing financing institutions, car manufacturers, service providers etc. for drivers to grow professionally and personally as well as a consistent earning opportunity for them on the
Ola platform.

Ola’s Concern

Ola has about 6 Million active riders on its app and they power over 1.5 Million cab rides in a day. Ola, one of the popular transportation providers in India, was also the first cab aggregators to develop a full-fledged app both for Android and iOS platform. Being the fastest growing cab
aggregator came with its share of challenges in a diverse environment like India.

Providing real-time updates, connecting drivers to customers to provide updates about location without burdening high mobile bills to the driver were the initial challenges faced. Ensuring customer privacy remained one of the other main challenges faced. Getting data, trackability for the calls initiated, detailed analytics for the voice calls triggered under a single platform was quite demanding.

Checking the validity for the claims made by drivers and customers about receiving and making calls and yet maintaining customer privacy became the need of the hour. Kaleyra’s next generation cloud-based business communication platform helped Ola bridging the communication gaps and improve driver-customer communication in real-time thereby achieving brand loyalty.

Solutions offered by Kaleyra

Being one of the foremost travel and transportation providers in the country, Ola was in search of a Cloud communications provider who can resolve their Voice issues and scale as they grow.

Kaleyra currently handles 600 million calls per year through its competent and secure voice platform for over 8000 clients across the globe. It has strong network operator connections with over 800+ operators worldwide who enable Kaleyra’s reach across 190+ countries at the moment.

When Ola wanted to improve the driver-customer communication, Kaleyra’s voice platform provided all the necessary services through their easy to set-up, scalable, secure platform. The voice services offered to Ola resolved issues even when their services grew from handling only one type of cab to numerous kinds like Micro, Prime, Share, Outstation and more.

As Ola’s platform grew, Kaleyra’s platform helped them scale without any hassle. Approximately 7 Million number of calls are triggered from Kaleyra’s platform to Ola’s customers/drivers on a monthly basis.

Connecting drivers and customers in real-time

Ola not only provides an excellent customer service, it has given a fair share of thought to make its driver-partner relationship seamless as well. To solve communication gap and to ensure that drivers did not incur high mobile bill at the end of every month, Ola used Kaleyra’s virtual mobile numbers. Using virtual mobile numbers helped drivers to get in touch with customers in real-time without worrying about being subjected to additional costs.

Virtual mobile numbers, also known as DID (direct inward dialing) numbers, are used to route calls to new or existing phone lines. Incoming calls can be forwarded to the number chosen by the business.

Virtual numbers lets drivers and customers to get connected on the same platform in real-time via single number that are active only temporarily for the duration of the trip.

How does it help Ola?

Once the ride is booked, driver initiates call from his mobile number to reach customers number. Kaleyra’s robust API triggers the call between the driver and rider through its voice platform and the customer receives the call in real-time. This number is valid only temporarily and lasts only for that particular trip. Once the trip is ended, the number is recycled and reassigned to initiate call between driver and customer for a fresh trip.

With a geographically diverse region like India, connecting riders with drivers in real-time becomes of utmost priority. Kaleyra’s virtual numbers not only provides a single platform for riders and drivers to be connected, the numbers have been subjected to quality testing. The quality testing allows the numbers to be tested and screened effectively thus removing the risk of cross-talk from previous users and achieve better performance by using aged, quarantined numbers.

Ola vouching for safeguarding customer’s privacy

Call Masking is a unique feature that ensures complete privacy of customers contact number. It safeguards customer’s identity by masking customer’s contact number and displays a virtual number to the driver. Virtual numbers provided are valid temporarily and only for the duration of the trip.

A virtual number provided by Kaleyra powers the communication between drivers and riders in real-time. This feature enables hassle-free communication between both parties.

How did Ola use Call Masking to protect customer’s privacy?

Call masking by Kaleyra helped Ola to hide customer’s number when the driver calls the customer. When the driver initiates call to the customer, Kaleyra’s voice platform masks the real phone number of the customer and connects the call with the customer using virtual number that is temporarily valid. For a client who placed customer satisfaction at the forefront, Kaleyra helped enable this dream into reality through Number masking or Call masking.real-time. This feature enables hassle-free communication between both parties.

Since Kaleyra’s platform took care of bridging a platform to connect drivers with customers, the drivers in turn did not have to incur any personal costs on mobile bill. Call masking did more than just focusing on offering a secure conversation platform.

Kaleyra’s platform provided Ola with real-time call tracking that helped them drive seamless communications. Through Call recordings, Kaleyra provided the cab aggregator with an opportunity to listen and analyze conversations between driver and riders thus helping them take a step towards improving customer experience by resolving queries faster.

The recording also helped driver to put forth their issues with the cab aggregator and get faster solution to grievances. Detailed metrics and graphical analysis provided Ola with easy-to-use, advanced dashboard on Kaleyra’ voice platform that helped Ola to check the exact time of call initiated, duration of call etc. which helped the transportation facilitator to address and resolve driver-customer complaints seamlessly.

• Driver gets allocated a virtual number via systemto contact customer
• Driver places call to customer and the allocated virtual number gets reflected
• Customer will receive call through this local/virtual number at their end

Providing dedicated number to help Ola drivers

Ola not only concentrated on providing top notch customer service. It also empowered drivers by turning drivers to entrepreneurs. Ola helped drivers get their own car at huge discounts and affordable repayment scheme. This partnership presented with its own concerns. Ola needed a dedicated number that would help drivers get it touch with Ola easily and get their issues resolved faster.

When Ola reached out to resolve this issue, Kaleyra took the challenge and helped resolve client’s issue by providing a dedicated number to Ola on which drivers could call in order to bring the issues faced by them to the cab aggregator and get it resolved with a faster turnaround time. The dedicated number acts as point of contact between driver and Ola to hear any kind of grievances from the former.

It could be related to rides completed, incentives plan, payment related queries. This number acts as the one easy touchpoint between Ola and its drivers. 24×7 drivers can reach out to the cab aggregator to raise any concerns. This dedicated number gets more than a million calls per day from drivers across 100 cities where Ola is the go to transportation mode.

Kaleyra helps Ola’s customers to book cab even without active internet connection

India is geographically diverse where Internet connectivity is a real-issue. Ola wanted to ensure this should not be a barrier to its customers for booking cab. To enable smooth mobility for its customers, Ola redirects customers to its messaging centre where customers can share the location on a short code number.

Kaleyra provides a dedicated 6-digit Short code number to Ola which helps the customers to send their messages and share their location in order to book a cab offline. Kaleyra has offered unlimited keywords to businesses who use short code and this will help in configuring keywords according to the campaigns run. This also helps get better response rates since the short code number becomes a brand identity enabling customers to reach businesses anytime and anywhere.

Once the location is shared Ola asks its customer to choose the type of cab they want whether Micro, mini etc. post which they send the details of cab driver. Cab driver in turn gets notified about the real-time location of the customer and initiates call which is triggered by Kaleyra’s platform.

To start the ride, customers need OTP. If the customer for some reason is unable to get OTP or enters wrong OTP, Kaleyra’s Voice platform triggers an outbound call with the OTP to help customers enter the correct OTP and ride hassle-free. Outbound Dialing or OBD allows businesses to make automated calls through a platform to carry out key messages to customers.

These messages could be anything from bill reminders, appointments confirmation/cancellation/rescheduling, order confirmation status, OTPs etc. These calls can be set up in multiple languages to cater to customers in their preferred language. Kaleyra’s platform allows businesses to personalize these calls by using customer’s name which will result in providing a rich user experience for the customers and make them happy.

Outcome of the solutions offered

For all the calls initiated through between customers and drivers, Ola has increased its call success ratio to 70% by using Kaleyra’s cloud-based voice platform. Ola which operates across 110 cities in India uses Kaleyra’s Voice platform to trigger millions of calls to assist their riders and drivers in experiencing.

Having been our customer since 2015, Ola currently uses Kaleyra’s Voice Cloud to trigger more than 40% of its call volume receiving 100% satisfaction through each call connected. With Ola dividing its functions mainly under Customer, Marketing and Driver channels, Kaleyra has successfully provided a 360-degree integration to handle all of Ola’s communications needs through their easy-to-use, highly scalable multi-channel Cloud platform.

Kaleyra’s advanced dashboard helps capture every minute detail in form of real-time reports and graphical analytics. The reports can be downloaded easily and mapped to see the performance and paves way to improve ways to provide 100% customer and driver satisfaction.

Happy Client taking it a step ahead

With Ola trying to venture into the International markets, Kaleyra is supporting Ola to expand globally and support their vision in becoming the World’s leading cab aggregator by seamlessly integrating with our Cloud Communications platform.

Ola has ventured into International market in Australia currently and Kaleyra’s with its exceptional network connections in over 190+ countries is making it easier for Ola to achieve same level growth across countries through its dynamic Voice platform.

Key Takeaway

Switching to faster, smarter and more secure ways of interacting with customers is the need of the hour. Understanding their requirements and staying one step ahead by providing a technologically sound solution is the most apt way of achieving customer loyalty, brand recognition and customer satisfaction. Cloud Communications is the future of business communications.

The traditional PBX systems which consumed a lot of space and came with a number of constraints are a thing of the past. Cloud communications are fasters, cost effective and easily integrable. Moving your SMS and Voice requirements to Cloud gives you hassle-free connectivity, 24/7 support and to reach a larger target audience.

The detailed data and analytics helps track the messages and voice calls triggered giving businesses a better understanding of target audience. Businesses mainly focus on bridging communication gaps for its end users and in turn make their mark in the competitive market.