The challenge
A national express courier serving B2B SMEs across 38 cities was losing pickup bookings to faster competitors. SME customers raised pickup requests over phone or email, then waited 4 hours for an AWB and another half-day for actual pickup. Return shipments were a nightmare — manual AWB regeneration, no automatic pickup, customer chased the courier for two weeks. The 24-person tele-booking team was the bottleneck and could not scale beyond Tier-1 cities.
How we deployed
- Wired WhatsApp Business API as the primary pickup-booking channel — SMEs sent consignee details + photo of waybill in one chat.
- Generated AWB through Shiprocket and Delhivery APIs in 18 seconds, returned barcode-printable label to WhatsApp instantly.
- Triggered driver dispatch via the existing FMS — confirmed pickup ETA back to the customer chat.
- Automated return-shipment flow — scan-to-return on the consignee end, auto-AWB and auto-pickup booked without human touch.
- Surfaced an SME dashboard inside the courier portal showing live AWBs, pickup status and monthly invoice with GSTR-1 export.
What changed
- 1,800 net-new SME shippers onboarded across 9 months — 7× the previous-year run rate.
- AWB generation time fell from 4 hours to 18 seconds end-to-end.
- 88% of return shipments processed without any human touch on either side.
- Pickup turnaround time across the 38-city footprint dropped 42% on average.
- Half the tele-booking team redeployed to enterprise account management; other half handled 4× the daily volume.
"My SME customers used to call us. Now they WhatsApp at 11pm and a pickup is booked before they go to bed. We compete with the giants now because the experience is better."
— Head of SME · Express Courier Company