The challenge
A UAE-based freight forwarder - handling approximately 2,400 shipments per day across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and northern Emirates - was receiving 400–500 inbound customer messages daily. Their 14-person operations team was splitting time between managing actual freight operations and answering customer queries.
The breakdown was stark: 73% of all inbound messages were tracking-related. Customers asking where their shipment was, what the customs status was, and when it would be delivered. Every single one of these queries had an answer already in the company's TMS - it just required a human to look it up and type a reply.
The language dimension compounded the problem significantly. The UAE's diverse workforce meant customers were messaging in Arabic, English, Hindi, Tagalog, and Urdu. The ops team had reasonable English and Arabic coverage but struggled with the volume of Hindi and Tagalog queries - those customers experienced the longest response times and lowest satisfaction scores.
- 400–500 inbound WhatsApp and email queries per day
- 73% were pure tracking queries - answerable from TMS data
- Average response time: 3.2 hours (peak days: 6+ hours)
- 5 languages in active use - Arabic, English, Hindi, Tagalog, Urdu
- Ops team spending 35% of their time on customer queries instead of freight operations
The proactive insight
During the scoping phase, the Eshal implementation team identified something the client hadn't fully recognised: the majority of their high-frustration contacts weren't tracking queries at all. They were reactive delay contacts - customers who discovered a delay when they expected a delivery and called in frustration.
These contacts took 3–4× longer to resolve than standard tracking queries and had far lower CSAT scores regardless of outcome. The root cause was informational: customers discovered delays at the worst possible moment - when they expected delivery to happen.
The solution was proactive notification. If Eshal could detect a delay in the TMS feed and notify the affected customer before they noticed, the entire category of frustrated reactive contacts would be eliminated.
The deployment
Integration with the company's TMS (a custom-built system with a REST API) was completed in 6 hours. Eshal's implementation team handled the API connection; the client's team provided credentials and reviewed the test outputs. By end of day one, the system was live on their main WhatsApp Business number.
Three core capabilities were activated on day one:
- Tracking query automation: Any customer message containing an AWB number, order reference, or the words "where is" / "tracking" / equivalent in Arabic, Hindi, Tagalog triggered a live TMS lookup and reply
- Proactive delay alerts: TMS polled every 20 minutes. When a shipment status changed to a delay code, affected customers received a WhatsApp message with the new ETA and reason - before they asked
- Proof of delivery requests: Customers requesting ePOD received it instantly from TMS - no human retrieval required
"We were handling 400 'where is my shipment?' messages every day. Eshal answers every one instantly, in Arabic and English - directly from our TMS. Our operations team now focuses entirely on actual freight work. The first month was almost hard to believe."- Head of Customer Operations, UAE Freight Forwarder (anonymised on request)
Results - Month 1
Inbound contact volume: Fell from an average of 430 daily contacts to 172 - a 60% reduction. The remaining 40% consisted of freight booking requests (new business), claims and disputes (requiring human handling), and complex customs queries that required specialist knowledge.
Response time: Average first response dropped from 3.2 hours to 4 seconds for automated tracking queries. For customers in time-sensitive situations - particularly commercial importers tracking goods against production schedules - this was transformative.
Proactive alerts impact: In the first 30 days, Eshal sent 847 proactive delay notifications. Of those 847 customers, only 31 (3.7%) subsequently sent a follow-up message. In the same period prior year, delay-related reactive contacts represented approximately 140 contacts per day during peak periods.
Language coverage: For the first time, the company's Hindi and Tagalog-speaking customers received the same instant, accurate responses as Arabic and English speakers. Hindi tracking queries - previously averaging 5.1 hours response time - now resolved in 4 seconds. Tagalog CSAT scores (previously the lowest language segment) reached parity with English-speaking customer scores within 6 weeks.
Team impact: The 14-person ops team's time on customer queries dropped from 35% to 9%. The recaptured capacity was redirected to proactive shipment management, carrier relationship management, and a new same-day delivery service launch that had previously been deprioritised due to bandwidth constraints.
Six-month view
By Month 6, the company had extended Eshal to handle freight quote requests - customers could describe their cargo, origin, and destination in WhatsApp and receive a structured brief routed to the pricing team, pre-filled with all required parameters. Quote turnaround time fell from 4 hours to 45 minutes.
The ops director summarised the outcome: "We thought we were buying a chatbot. We got our operations team back."