How Ola Leveraged Kaleyra’s Cloud Communication To Connect Customers And Drivers Via Messaging

While public transport has been the go-to option for the longest time, people are now looking for easier, convenient and more comfortable means to get to their destinations without worrying about the hassle of walking up to a bus stand or getting into an auto while paying a price that could be out of one’s budget. This is where the private shared transportation services come into the picture. Cab aggregators have made it extremely easy for people to commute to work or to their other destinations while booking their ride through one easy application. This sector has now captured a major share in India’s growing economy by ensuring that people across the country have access to renting out cabs and autos for their ride.. Not only are these cabs easy to book, they are cost-effective and make the commute easy without being subjected to driving woes thereby allowing people to use them as a most preferred form of transport. But does this customer experience come easy? We’re proud to say it does! Cab aggregators have moved on from the traditional PBX systems which piled on their worry of infrastructure set-up to a more cost-friendly and environment friendly way of doing business by moving their business communication entirely to cloud and that’s precisely what Cloud Telephony does.

By moving communications to cloud, businesses can now manage their messaging and voice services without worry while ensuring that their database is safe and secure. It also helps businesses cater to a larger customer base in real-time basis all through one platform that is accessible across anywhere in the world. Powering up businesses such as enterprises, SMEs or even Startups, Cloud telephony solutions provides a secure and scalable platform that grows as your businesses grow without any glitch. It is cost-effective and enables automation of processes by reducing manual interventions thus helping you serve a larger customer base seamlessly. One such business that streamlined it’s customer communication though moving it’s contact centre on cloud was Ola! Kaleyra provided one of the world’s leading cab aggregators with a practical solution that helped them connect with customers better through an ever-evolving Cloud platform that ensures not just a hassle-free experience to the business but also keeps customer privacy and security as it’s utmost priority.

About Ola

Ola! Cabs is India’s leading taxi aggregator, providing point-to-point transportation for a million people on a daily basis. Ola Cabs being India’s largest cab aggregator with more than 6 million active users on its app and they power over 1.5 Million cab rides in a day in over 110 cities. Started in 2010, Ola cabs is the perfect mix of technology and transportation.

Ola adds about 1500 cabs approximately to its platform daily. It provides different kinds of cab services ranging from economic to luxury. The cabs are usually booked through their app, although they provide offline bookings via messages by sending the location.

In 2014, Ola diversified and incorporated autorickshaws in Bangalore and later went on to expand their Ola Auto services across various cities like Mysore, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Guwahati etc.

Enabling Cabs at Fingertips

Ola was one of the first cab aggregators to develop an app both for Android and iOS making cab bookings just a click away. Ola’s popular mobile app seamlessly integrated with customers, driver partners and revolutionized the travel industry. With multiple categories of cabs, Ola’s app was the first to allow customers to check, book, track, communicate and even pay for their rides without having to worry about overpriced transportation and manual intervention.

Ola Cabs chose Kaleyra’s cloud-based messaging platform from the time of their inception. Kaleyra offered the flexibility of a scalable and agile platform that helped the company to establish its competitive edge.

Glitches faced along the way

A business that is responsible for over 60% of India’s ride-sharing market did not come without glitches. Real-time communication between riders and drivers was one of the earliest hurdles that Ola! has had to face, adding to woes of updating customers and drivers through instant messages relating to updates on pick-up, drop offs, transactions etc was another matter of constraint.

While Ola! communicated largely through messages and phone calls, they found a dire need to channel their messaging through a platform that could scale as they grew their user base. Ola required a one stop solution for their communication needs that made it easy to update riders and drivers on real-time basis.

Kaleyra to the Rescue

Kaleyra’s cloud-based messaging platform capable of delivering 2.5 billion messages per month was exactly what Ola! was looking for. Kaleyra’s ability to send, receive, handle and manage massive volume of messages helped Ola! run their operations smoothly. With a 360-degree messaging solution, Ola! Was could then communicate with their customers in a more feasible way.

From sending out alerts about ride details to transactions done on the app and payments, Ola! Was ensuring that their stakeholders – customers, drivers and partners were kept up-to-date on real-time basis about updates. Ola! also leverage promotional messaging to communicate offers to their stakeholders.

Alerts:

Alert messages allows businesses to send messages to customers 24×7 with a unique six-character SENDER ID that informs customers about transactions, payment alerts, payment dues, OTPs, track orders, shipment information and more.

Cab/Auto Booking details:

Customers receive information about cab/auto booking details like driver name, mobile number, cab details, and OTP that’s required to start the trip and the amount to be paid. If a customer fails to board the cab in the allotted time, OLA informs rider about cab cancellation through Kaleyra’s messaging platform.

Ride Share Details:

Kaleyra helped Ola! ensure that their customers are safe with every ride they take by helping them share their ride details on the Ola! app with their friends and family through Kaleyra’s platform. This not only helps customers, but also their near and dear ones by constantly informing them about their location and where-abouts.

Customer Proﬁle Updates:

Customers get notified through messages when they modify their saved address on Ola! app, add/change their profile picture. An OTP is triggered when a change is initiated. These messages not only serves the purpose of keeping the customers updated about changes, it also adds in an extra layer of security to inform customers if they have not initiated those changes.

“OLA, XXX09 is the OTP to authorize change of Go Home Address being made to your OLA proﬁle. If you have not initiated this request‚ kindly contact OLA Ofﬁce.”

Payment Related Messages:

To make it easier for customers to travel cashless, Ola introduced a wallet system called OLA Money, which is a easy, go-to payment module to help customers transact and make payments online. Messages are triggered to customers when a payment is made through OLA Money for rides and other transactions where OLA Money is accepted as a payment mode. Messages are also sent to customers about clearing OLA dues.

“Hi {Customer Name} ! Rs 865.00 Ola Money Postpaid is due tomorrow. Settle it now: . Check transaction history: case history. Please ignore if already paid.” “Dear {Customer Name}! Please clear Rs 973.0 outstanding due for your Ola ride to keep riding cashless. Pay Now: . Please ignore if already paid.”

Payment Related Messages:

Kaleyra informs customers if they have raised any concerns regarding their trip on the app and helps the customers solve their queries with just the click from their inbox.

New Device Login:

Customers are notified about logins made from a new, unidentified device and keeps them informed to ensure that their customer’s data is safe and secure. It gives details about the kind of operating system: Android or iOS along with date, place and time details. An added layer of security is provided to reset account via URL link to avoid suspicious login.

“Your Ola account was logged into from a new device. Login: Ola Cabs android app time: 03:33PM‚ 10 Jul 2018Place: Lucknow. If you ﬁnd this suspicious‚ secure your account by clicking here https://olaca.bs/X0A16sdE72”

Multi-language Support:

Kaleyra helps Ola! Diversify it’s communication to a larger audience through multi-language support by updating drivers about the ride, pick up details in a local language that is easier for them to understand.

“Share express की bookings में pick up और drop, main routes पे ही होता है. आपका fiNyk pickup, route के बाहर था. कृपया customer pick up और drop, app में fnÂk;sे गये point पे ही करें.”

Kaleyra triggers many kinds of alert messages to customers like account reacti- vation, offline bookings and to the Corporates who use OLA for their daily commuting purposes. Kaleyra provides a dedicated 6 digit short code number through which customers can book cabs offline and send location details and receive OTP and cab details.

Driver/ Partner Updates:

Ola! not only depends on Kaleyra for seamless customer communication, it also helps keep drivers and partners updated. Kaleyra triggers messages to drivers informing about new bookings and sharing the ride details, daily earnings, incentives earned, number of trips completed on that particular day, week and month. Similarly, drivers and partners are updated via messages about managing cars, viewing drivers, payments etc that can be triggered via OLA partner app.

“Dear Driver, Your next booking has been allotted. Please move to the pickup point after completing the current
booking. #New Booking#OK#1531220xxxx”

“Hello Partner, now you can view and manage your cars, drivers and payments through the Ola Partner App. Down-
load https://goo.gl/LtYy5F”

Through Kaleyra’s messaging services, fake bookings were reduced to almost 0%. By providing OTPs in a timely manner, app logins were made successful, thus adding an extra layer of authentication. By adding OTPs for every ride, fake bookings were completely avoided thus providing an accurate active user base. Through Kaleyra’s intelligent dashboard, Ola! Could pull out detailed reports on the overall Messaging status in an hourly, weekly and monthly basis.

Promotional Messages:

Ola! also uses Kaleyra’s messaging platform to manage their promotional campaigns. With the new Advanced dashboard, Ola! could measure campaign success more effectively on hourly, daily, weekly, monthly basis. With a real-time update on the messages sent, delivered and undelivered, Ola! could also ensure that their database was up-to-date.

“Get around any city without a worry! Ride around town in high’-quality AC cabs available on hourly Rentals or book an Outstation for a quick inter’-city trip. Know more case history

“Still paying after every ride? Unlock Ola Money Postpaid. OM Postpaid lets you pay one bill for multiple rides up to Rs 1500 for 15 days. Ride now and pay later.”

“Congratulations! You just unlocked Ola Money Postpaid. Now experience the One’-click checkout. An exclusive service offered to only loyal customers.”

Customized Messages:

Kaleyra’s platform allows OLA to upload customer’s details in a secure way and initiate customized messages by
configuring templates and mentioning customer name and inform them about promotions, ride details, customer support
details etc.

“Welcome aboard (Customer Name)! Your Ola Outstation trip started at 4:04 pm‚ 10th July. Initial km reading of
your cab was 16890 km. Pay toll‚ parking & permit charges in cash after verifying amount. Happy journey!”

Outcome of the Solutions Offered by Us

Kaleyra understands the need for business communication and offers top-notch solutions to its customers. In a bid to resolve the communication gap, about 70% of Ola’s SMSs volume in 2017 were triggered by Kaleyra’s Cloud platform giving them the edge of excellent customer communication.

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 platform delivers more than 27 Million messages every month to various stakeholders involved. Ola! has been able to reach out to more than 20% of its growing customer base as compared to when they first started their journey with us in 2015.

With Ola! now expanding to tier-2 and tier-3 cities, Kaleyra’s strong operator base is helping the cab aggregator get in touch with customers across the country without the hassle of worrying about telecom compliances.

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 Cloud Communications platform! Ola! recently expanded its business operation in Perth, Australia trying to expand globally.

Kaleyra with its strong network operator connection across 190+ countries worldwide is helping Ola! to
empower communication to its new international customers through its Global messaging platform.

Industry Sector

Transportation (Taxi aggregator)

Annual Revenue

INR 2,222 crores

Customers Since

2018