Palabre - Omnichannel Helpdesk for a West African Marketplace
One Helpdesk for Buyers and Sellers Across Seven Channels
Designed and built a clickable omnichannel helpdesk for an Abidjan marketplace serving five francophone West African countries: email, web form, chat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and phone in one ticket timeline, a customer 360 with orders and mobile money refunds, refund approvals by limit and a live floor for team leads.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
Dashboard, inbox, ticket workspace, refund approvals and live floor. Every one of the 22 demo tickets opens its own workspace with its conversation, SLA timers and customer 360.
Email, web form, chat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and phone calls in one conversation. WhatsApp tickets count down the 24-hour window and switch to approved templates when it closes.
Agents refund up to 20,000 XOF, senior agents 75,000, team leads 250,000 and support managers 1,000,000; anything larger goes to finance. Nobody can approve their own request.
22 tickets across 8 queues, 16 agents, 12 buyers and 2 sellers in 5 countries, 11 orders paid by mobile money, card or cash on delivery, and 11 refunds.
The Problem
Kolatier's care team of about 90 agents answered buyers and sellers from a shared Gmail inbox, a WhatsApp Business app on six phones passed between shifts, the Facebook page inbox, a chat tool that did not know about orders and a spreadsheet of call notes. One late order could become two unconnected conversations with two different answers, refunds were approved in a Slack channel with no limits, and in peak weeks such as Tabaski and the December sales buyers waited more than two days for a first email reply.
Our Solution
Palabre brings every channel into one ticket, with the buyer's or seller's orders, refunds and disputes from the marketplace beside the conversation. It routes tickets by skill, language and customer tier, tracks SLAs by tier, enforces WhatsApp and Meta messaging windows in the composer, and sends refunds above an agent's limit up a fixed approval chain.
The Challenge: One Conversation, Many Channels and Rules
A marketplace helpdesk serves two sides at once: buyers paying in XOF by mobile money across five countries, and about 6,000 sellers who ship the orders. Each channel has its own rules for when and how a business may reply.
Five Inboxes, No Shared History
A buyer who wrote on WhatsApp and then called about the same order reached two agents who could not see each other's work. Seeing the order meant switching to the marketplace back office, and asking the seller meant a personal WhatsApp message nobody else could read.
Messaging Windows Per Channel
WhatsApp allows free replies for 24 hours after the customer's message; after that only pre-approved templates can be sent, and only to people who opted in. Facebook and Instagram allow standard replies within 24 hours, extended to 7 days for replies written by a person with the human agent tag.
Refunds to Mobile Money Wallets
Most buyers pay with Orange Money, MTN MoMo, Wave or Moov Money under BCEAO e-money rules, and a refund generally goes back to the wallet that paid. Refunds went through a Slack channel with no limits and no record of who approved what.
Personal Data Across Five Countries
Côte d'Ivoire's Law No. 2013-450 applies to buyers', sellers' and agents' data, with ARTCI authorisation needed for transfers outside the country. Senegal, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo have their own laws, and counterfeit and fraud reports sat in general queues for days.
Our Approach: From Care Workflows to a Clickable Helpdesk
Spec and Rules Research
Mapped 10 staff roles from level 1 agent to admin, plus buyers and sellers without a login, and 36 screens: 31 for staff and 5 public pages for the contact form, chat widget, ticket status, CSAT survey and seller replies. Defined the data model for tickets, messages, messaging windows, side conversations, orders, refunds, versioned refund limits and SLA policies, escalations, QA reviews and the audit log, and wrote down the WhatsApp, Meta, mobile money and data protection rules the design follows.
Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit
Built 5 key screens on a production dashboard kit: the dashboard with KPIs, open tickets by channel, volume against forecast and a needs attention list, the inbox with views, queues, SLA countdowns and messaging window clocks, the ticket workspace with collision banner, translate toggle, macros, WhatsApp template mode, issue refund and escalation modals, refund approvals with the approval chain, and the live floor with queue thresholds and agent concurrency. All actions run on local state.
What a Production Build Adds
Integration with the WhatsApp Cloud API or a provider such as Infobip or Twilio, the Messenger and Instagram APIs, Postmark or Mailgun email, Twilio Voice or Aircall, Kolatier's marketplace API, CinetPay or PayDunya refunds through the payments service, DeepL or Google translation and SMS for survey links. Google Workspace sign-in for staff, an audit log of every refund, approval, escalation, merge and export, and the trust and safety, QA, CSAT, workforce, reports, settings and public pages.
Why It Works: Context and Limits Where Agents Reply
Every Channel, One Timeline
Customer messages, agent replies, yellow internal notes, side conversation summaries, recorded calls and system events sit in one thread with channel icons and delivery status. A French message from a buyer can be shown with its machine translation, clearly labelled.
The Composer Knows the Rules
Each WhatsApp ticket shows how long its window has left, and when it closes the composer reads "Window closed - only approved templates can be sent" and opens the template picker. The SLA policy that applies is explained on the ticket, for example a 15-minute first reply for Kolatier Plus buyers on WhatsApp.
Two Agents Never Answer Twice
Inbox rows show a dot when someone else has a ticket open, and the workspace shows who is viewing so replies from both agents are checked before sending. Phone numbers stay masked to the last digits until Reveal is clicked, which is logged.
Refunds Follow a Fixed Chain
Issue refund checks the amount against the agent's own limit and says whether it goes straight to the payments service or for approval. Approvers see the agent's note, the buyer's refunds in 90 days and any trust and safety flag, can approve a lower amount or reject with a required reason, and pass anything above their limit to the next level.
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Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
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Location
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
Contact Us
Locations
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
© 2026 - Copyright. All Rights reserved Oceanlab