End User Care Policy
1. OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE
Kaleyra receives inquiries regarding End User transactions from End Users (or Customers if different), MNOs, or Regulators. The Kaleyra End User Care process enables us to provide the End User with the contact details of the Merchant who is responsible for any charges that have been applied to the End User’s mobile bill, as well as request the Merchant to cease the transactions and contact the End User to discuss the charges.
2. DISCLAIMER
This End User Care Policy does not provide any form of regulatory, compliance, or legal advice. As such, Kaleyra makes no warranties, guarantees, representations, or undertakings that meeting the requirements of this policy will prevent a merchant from any action, whether legal, Regulatory, or by an MNO. It should not be used or relied on by any party outside of Kaleyra.
3. SCOPE
This User Care Policy sets out Kaleyra’s approach to End User Care as relates to the support of End Users.
The End User Care Policy should be considered alongside other Kaleyra Policies and Best Practice Guidelines and in particular our Vulnerable End User Policy and Refund Best Practice Guideline.
4. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Kaleyra’s End User Care team is responsible for day-to-day maintaining and implementing this User Care Policy.
5. POLICY
5.1 General Principles
End-User queries received by Kaleyra relate to usage of Offerings
All End User-initiated queries shall be first routed to the relevant Merchant unless Kaleyra has initiated a specific requirement for that Offering whereby it handles the query without reference to the Merchant (e.g. certain refund situations),.
Kaleyra works to ensure that its Merchants are able to meet their obligations by passing on End User queries. In cases it comes to our attention that Merchants delay or have not handled End User queries in a satisfactory manner, the Kaleyra End User Care team acts as an escalation point, working to help achieve a satisfactory outcome to the query.
5.2 Availability and contacts
Kaleyra End User Care team is available on business days from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm GMT/BST.
End-user queries may be received via the following means:
a) Email: Kaleyra’s support email is endusercare@tatacommunications.com. Emails received at this address are processed to create tickets in our ticketing system automatically.
b) Live phone call: the Kaleyra support line, 020 7633 5073, features a 24×7 IVR system that greets the caller and invites them to type the shortcode charging them. If the caller enters a shortcode dedicated to one of Kaleyra’s Merchants, the call will be transferred to the Merchant’s support line. If the caller enters anything else or nothing, then the call gets transferred for the user to speak to a Kaleyra Support Agent. If all agents are busy or the call is outside of support hours, it goes to voicemail. Live calls are logged by our End User Care agents as tickets, for further processing of the support request.
c) Voice mail: Voice mails are recorded in our telephony system and the recordings are processed to create tickets automatically.
As part of receiving an End User query, the Kaleyra End User Care team will ask for the mobile number being charged. The mobile number is only requested for lookup in our messaging platform, for the purposes of handling the End User query. The mobile number is then captured in our ticketing system, with the rest of the information around the End User’s query and its outcome.
5.3 Processing Initial Queries
At a high level, our general workflow is:
a) The information of queries received via live calls is captured by our agents in the ticketing system while speaking to the End User on the phone, while the information via emails or voicemails is captured automatically by the email system.
b) Sequence of handling: Live calls are handled while the Customer or End User is on the phone with our End User Care Agents. The remaining open tickets are processed according to the time of arrival in our ticketing system. As an exception, queries from the Regulator are handled with higher priority.
c) Investigation: Kaleyra’s End User Care Agents look up the given mobile number in Kaleyra’s platform and determine the following pieces of information:
- the Offering(s) that the number interacted with;
- whether there were charges for this traffic;
- whether the Offering was a subscription or once-off;
- the Merchant operating the Offering;
- the Merchant’s support email and support number;
- whether other tickets exist in our system on the same mobile number.
d) Cancellation: In the case of online payment subscriptions specifically, the Kaleyra Support Agent determines subscription status, and cancels it (if so requested by the End User).
e) Forwarding to Merchant: Kaleyra’s End User Care Agents forward the End User’s request to the relevant Merchant; the email includes the mobile number and any other information provided necessary to address the query and requests the Merchant to cancel the subscription (where applicable) and to reach out to the End User to discuss the charges. If the original request was an email, then we add the End User’s email at the bottom of our email to the Merchant.
f) Confirmation to User: Kaleyra’s End User Care Agents confirm back to the End User the following details:
the merchant’s company name,
- the merchant’s support email and support number;
- the Agent also informs the user that we have already reached out to the merchant about their charges, and that we asked the merchant to contact the customer.
- In the case of an online payment subscription, they also conform to the user the cancellation status of their mobile number.
Kaleyra’s support agents observe a target timeframe of one working day for providing the End User with the above information.
The way of communicating to the user is by following the channel via which they reach out to Kaleyra unless requested otherwise. Specifically:
- for email requests, we respond via email;
- for live calls we provide as much info as possible during the call and follow up via phone if needed;
- for voicemail requests, we respond via the phone, and either speak to the user directly or leave a voicemail on their phone. If the user does not pick up the phone and does not have a voicemail facility, then our process is to retry to contact the user a few times, at different times of the day, in an effort to reach them at a more convenient time.
g) Closing of the ticket: Kaleyra’s End User Care Agents fill out the merchant and service information in the ticket, and capture a summary of their conversation with the caller. A copy of the email to the merchant is added automatically by our email system to the ticket. Once the support request is processed to completion, the ticket is marked with Status Closed, so that it leaves the queue and the End User Care Agent can move to the next Live Call or to the next open ticket in the queue.
Further to the above steps, any user or MNO responses that may have reached our support email are also processed automatically by our email system into the corresponding tickets. In such cases, the corresponding tickets get reopened so that they can be followed up on.
5.4 Escalations
In case Kaleyra’s End User Care team becomes aware of the ineffective handling of a user support request by a Merchant, they escalate as soon as possible to the Kaleyra Compliance Officer and relevant Account Manager. This can include issues such as:
- users escalating to Kaleyra about an unsatisfactory resolution of their requests,
- malfunctioning support lines
- refunds applicable to users but which were not offered by the merchant (in which case Kaleyra can step in to offer a refund).
5.5 Handling of personal information
In the course of handling End User queries, End-User personal information may be requested and further processed by Kaleyra, such as in the below examples:
a) Email to the merchant: An email is sent to the Merchant, asking them to contact the End User to cancel the subscription and discuss the charges; this communication may include the mobile number being charged, a contact number provided (if different from the one being charged), as well as any information the end-user may have provided on emails, such as their email address and name.
b) Information shared with Kaleyra Finance: For the purposes of processing refunds to the End Users out of Kaleyra, the following information may be shared with our Finance department, as applicable: the mobile number on which an SMS pay code is to be sent; a bank account number (IBAN) to which a bank transfer can take place, the bill payer’s name and street address where a cheque may be sent; the bill payer’s email where a PayPal transaction can be sent.
c) Other internal communications: from time to time a mobile number may be shared between the End User Care team and other teams in the organization, such as Compliance, or Commercials teams, solely for the purpose of escalating individual cases and in striving for a positive outcome for the end-user, or for review of the relevant mobile service.