Rappi: The super app proving that customer experience drives lifetime value
How Rappi’s three-sided marketplace uses real-time communication, personalization, and a decade-long partnership with Infobip to turn everyday moments into long-term loyalty.
Think of a delivery window like a small orchestra. Customers set the tempo. Couriers handle the rhythm. Merchants carry the melody. And Rappi? Rappi is the conductor, coordinating thousands of moving parts so every order lands in harmony.
One missed cue and the whole piece can fall apart. A traffic delay, a stock issue, a sudden downpour. But when communication flows, an update here, a confirmation there, the chaos turns into rhythm. Everyone knows what’s happening, and the experience feels effortless.
That’s how Rappi grew from a food delivery startup into one of Latin America’s biggest super apps, now managing everything from groceries and payments to travel, banking, and flower delivery. We sat down with Paulo Yllegas, Chief Marketing Officer at Rappi Colombia, to talk about how real-time communication, personalization, and a long-standing partnership with Infobip help Rappi keep customers, couriers, and merchants connected in real time.
Customer experience as the foundation of retention
More than 60% of consumers say the messages they receive from brands feel irrelevant, and over half believe most experiences are too generic.
Customers have more options, and they want to be understood. They want to have personalization and micro-segmentation. They want what is better for them and not for anybody else. And we need to adapt to those changes and those different trends. We need to be perfect. There’s no room for mediocre solutions or for bad experiences.
Paulo Yllegas
CMO, Rappi Colombia
Rappi knows that retention depends on clarity, not urgency.
Each message, update, and interaction works like a signal that reinforces reliability. A confirmation that an order is on its way. A proactive notification that prevents confusion. The smooth handover when plans change. Every small moment keeps the rhythm of trust intact.
Rappi uses real-time communication across Voice, WhatsApp, and SMS to keep those moments connected. A customer expects an instant confirmation after checkout, a merchant needs a prompt to prepare, and a courier depends on live updates to stay on track. Each touchpoint happens in seconds, yet together, they form a single, connected journey.
Paulo calls it a lifetime value equation: loyalty is built through consistency. When the experience feels predictable, people return. “If you don’t have the customer as the center of every decision, then you won’t be able to retain them and provide long-term success for the business,” says Paulo Yllegas, CMO of Rappi Colombia.
That commitment to improvement shapes how Rappi operates every day. As order volumes rise and new verticals launch, teams continuously refine workflows, automate repetitive processes, and strengthen communication between customers, couriers, and merchants. It’s how Rappi continues to feel personal, even at scale.
“The more and the new businesses that we introduce to our app, the better the experience becomes,” Paulo adds. “Understanding the customers, their needs, and improving every day helps us deliver the best experience to stay in the super app environment.”
For Rappi, this is what defines a super app, not the number of services it offers, but the quality of experience that connects them. Every interaction is an opportunity to improve, every piece of feedback a chance to fine-tune the system. Because when experience becomes the foundation, retention follows naturally.
Micro-segmentation and hyper-personalization as business imperatives
With millions of users opening the app every day, Rappi knows no two customers are the same. People don’t respond to one-size-fits-all offers. They expect relevance in every interaction. The same message that engages a student in Bogotá might fall flat with a family in Buenos Aires. “Consumers are more demanding of time and quality. They want their orders delivered as fast as possible and in optimal condition.” explains Paulo Yllegas, CMO of Rappi Colombia.
Through micro-segmentation and hyper-personalization, Rappi began building richer profiles around user behavior: what they order, when they order, and which channels they prefer to use. These insights help the team design communications that feel timely, contextual, and useful.
Micro-segmentation captures the nuances: who shops for groceries after work, who uses RappiPay for daily transactions, who prefers WhatsApp over in-app chat. Hyper-personalization builds on that insight by predicting intent. It helps Rappi understand what customers might need next and how to offer it at the right moment. The goal isn’t to send more messages, but to send meaningful ones.
It’s about understanding what the customers are demanding and asking and when, and being able to listen to them, listen to their regards, to their questions, to their doubts. And all these channels that we use are the tool and the way to solve those problems and to engage with the customers in the right way.
Paulo Yllegas
CMO, Rappi Colombia
This approach extends beyond customers to merchants and couriers, too, because they work in a three-sided marketplace. Personalized dashboards, targeted updates, and transparent communication help each group stay aligned while still feeling individually supported.
By pairing data-driven insight with coordination, Rappi ensures that information flows effortlessly between customers, merchants, and couriers. Messages arrive at the right moment, through the right touchpoint. When every side knows what’s happening, trust replaces friction, and complexity turns into connection.
A future shaped by Voice, AI, and frictionless experiences
Predicting the future of customer experience is never simple, but one thing is certain: it’s becoming more conversational. Typing and tapping are giving way to speaking and listening, where Voice represents the next step.
The more apps and solutions start to know the consumer, to make personal recommendations and create frictionless environments, the ones that do it best will win the race. I would think that in the future, Voice solutions are going to be the ones that will win. The less you need to navigate or type, the more frictionless, easy, and fast the experience becomes for consumers.
Paulo Yllegas
CMO, Rappi Colombia
Voice adds a layer of reassurance to digital interactions. It shortens the distance between question and answer while creating a sense of responsiveness that text alone can’t always achieve. Combined with AI, it enables Rappi to deliver information with context, understanding intent, tone, and urgency to provide exactly what customers need at the right moment.
Looking ahead, Rappi will keep refining how their communication, guided by data, powered by automation, and shaped by genuine human understanding. Because in the end, great brands don’t just respond, they anticipate, understand, and continue the conversation.
Infobip has been a key ally in opening conversational and transactional channels with our customers. They understand the best ways, the best moments, and the best type of messages to deliver to our users, and the best channel to use for each of their needs and specific requests they may have, either with a customer complaint or a promotion that we may have in the app.
Paulo Yllegas
CMO, Rappi Colombia
