Customer Service — Cuballama

Overview and service philosophy

Cuballama is a travel and experiences marketplace founded in 2015 that supports bookings, local guides, and logistics for travelers to Cuba. The customer service operation is designed to resolve transactional issues (booking changes, cancellations, refunds), on-the-ground incidents (lost luggage, missed transfers), and advanced support (group bookings, B2B accounts). In 2024 Cuballama handled approximately 1.2 million inbound interactions across voice, chat, and email, with a goal to maintain a 4.6/5 average CSAT and an NPS ≥ 40.

The team’s service philosophy emphasizes measurable outcomes: reduce time-to-resolution, maximize first-contact resolution (FCR), and protect revenue via clear refund and upsell policies. Cuballama targets an FCR of 85% and average handle time (AHT) of 6 minutes for phone interactions, metrics tracked in real time through dashboards and monthly business reviews.

Channels, hours, and service-level agreements (SLAs)

Cuballama operates a 24/7 global support model with regional hubs in Havana and Miami. Primary contact channels and their target SLAs are: phone — average answer time ≤ 120 seconds during business peaks and ≤ 30 seconds for priority enterprise accounts; live chat — response within 30 seconds and median chat duration 7–9 minutes; email — initial response within 24 hours with full resolution target within 72 hours for standard tickets; social media — triage within 2 hours during office hours. These SLAs are enforced with automated escalation rules and service credits for enterprise customers.

To keep costs predictable, Cuballama differentiates standard and premium support. Standard consumer support is included with every booking; premium support (24/7 dedicated line, 1:1 concierge) is sold as a subscription at $29/month or $199/year per traveler. Enterprise service-level agreements start at $499/month and include a 2-minute guaranteed phone pickup, monthly SLA reports, and a named account manager.

Standard SLA table (summary)

• Phone (standard): Answer <120s; FCR target 85%
• Chat: Initial response <30s; median duration 7–9 minutes
• Email: Initial response <24h; resolution <72h
• Priority enterprise: Phone pickup <2min; dedicated manager

Key performance indicators and reporting

Cuballama tracks a compact set of KPIs to judge operational health: CSAT (target 4.6/5), Net Promoter Score (goal ≥ 40), First Contact Resolution (target 85%), Average Handle Time for voice (target 6 minutes), Average Speed of Answer (target <120 seconds), contact containment (percentage resolved without agent transfer > 78%), and cost per contact (target <$3.50 for digital channels). These KPIs are refreshed hourly for floor managers and aggregated into weekly and monthly reports for executives.

Monthly reports include volume forecasts, shrinkage-adjusted staffing plans, root-cause analyses for any KPI breaches, and an outcomes section showing financial impact (e.g., prevented chargebacks, recovered revenue). For example, a 2023 initiative that improved email turnaround from 36 to 18 hours recovered an estimated $180K in booking revenue and improved CSAT by 0.12 points.

Staffing, training, and quality assurance

The Cuballama customer service center employs 52 full-time agents (as of Q1 2025) operating in three shifts to cover 24-hour demand, plus 8 supervisors and 3 workforce analysts. Hiring criteria emphasize multilingual fluency (Spanish + English required; Portuguese and French preferred for certain markets), 18–24 hours of onboarding training, and ongoing quarterly skill refreshers. New agents pass a 12-step certification process before handling live tickets.

Quality assurance (QA) runs continuously: 12% of interactions are sampled monthly for compliance, tone, correctness, and outcome. QA scoring drives individualized coaching, and agents hitting <80% QA for two consecutive months enter an intensive improvement plan. Training content is tracked in an LMS; successful completion of key modules (refund policy, complex itineraries, regulatory compliance) is tied to eligibility for premium-pay shifts and promotion.

Technology stack, automation, and integrations

The service platform is a hybrid stack: Zendesk for ticketing, Twilio for telephony and IVR, Dialogflow for conversational routing, and Looker for dashboards and BI. Integrations include real-time booking data via REST APIs to the Cuballama core (booking engine), payment gateway (Stripe), and logistics partners (local transfer operators). This architecture allows automated pre-flight checks (triggered 48 hours prior) and automated refunds where policy conditions are met.

Automation handles roughly 28% of inbound volume via intelligent self-service: flight status lookups, simple date changes, FAQs, and status updates. Bots are designed to escalate to a human at the first sign of complexity — transfers, chargebacks, or regulatory queries. All customer-facing systems enforce TLS 1.2+, AES-256 data encryption at rest, and SOC2 controls; payment flows are PCI-DSS compliant through Stripe tokenization.

Pricing structure, refunds, and dispute resolution

Pricing for support tiers is explicit: standard support included in bookings; premium traveler support $29/month; annual premium $199. Enterprise packages start at $499/month, with bespoke pricing for >5,000 monthly contacts. Refunds follow a 3-tier policy: instant refunds (up to 48 hours post-booking for specific vendors), conditional refunds (assessed case-by-case within 7–14 calendar days), and non-refundable items (clearly marked during checkout). Average refund processing time is 5 business days for instant cases and up to 21 business days for partner-dependent refunds.

Disputes escalated to chargeback prevention teams use a documented workflow: collect evidence within 3 business days, submit merchant responses within 10 days, and follow up with the payment provider for up to 60 days. Cuballama reports a chargeback rate below 0.6% and works with partners to reduce fraud through 3DS authentication and identity checks for high-value bookings.

Escalation, legal compliance, and contact details

Escalation paths include front-line agents, supervisors, a dedicated resolution team, and senior management for incidents classified as Severity 1 (safety, regulatory breach, or systemic payment failure). Incident response aims for initial containment within 60 minutes and full resolution or workaround within 24 hours for Severity 1 events. Legal and compliance functions review incidents quarterly and provide audit-ready documentation for regulators and partners.

Primary contact points (operational): Cuballama Customer Care, 125 Calle San José, Havana 10400, Cuba; phone +53 7 555 0123 (regional support), US toll-free +1 305 555 0142; email [email protected]; website https://www.cuballama.com. Hours: 24/7 global support with business office hours (Havana hub) 08:00–20:00 CST for in-person visits by appointment. For enterprise clients, request a named account manager via [email protected] and ask for the SLA addendum (available since 2021).