Captain Shuru

The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) serves a large and diverse taxpayer base of over 7 million individuals and businesses, with an annual revenue target exceeding KSh 2 trillion. As KRA strives to engage and support taxpayers across Kenya's urban and rural areas, the challenge of providing accessible, reliable guidance becomes even more crucial, especially in times of heightened economic pressure and public demonstrations.

This year, these events underscored the urgent need for KRA to be easily accessible, ensuring taxpayers receive accurate, timely information and support to fulfil their obligations.

Recognising the need for automation and alternative service channels to meet growing demand, we sought a scalable way to handle rising volumes of taxpayer inquiries — which previously relied on in-person visits or call centres, both time-consuming and often overwhelming.

• →Automate customer inquiries to improve turnaround time for service requests
• →Establish a 24/7 support channel to reduce wait times, enhance taxpayer satisfaction, and relieve pressure on KRA's call centres
• →Drive increased compliance by ensuring taxpayers have accessible, reliable information

With 90% of Kenyans on mobile and 10 million on WhatsApp, we used one of Kenya's most popular platforms to make tax support fast. We launched Captain Shuru — a WhatsApp chatbot available 24/7 to taxpayers in both rural and urban areas, through the phone already in their hand, with no new app to download.

Why WhatsApp: established reach and familiarity, ensuring ease of adoption.

Automation: the chatbot handles inquiries on tax registration, deadlines, refunds and more, cutting turnaround on these questions from hours to seconds.

Human touch: for complex inquiries, the bot seamlessly hands users over to live agents.

• →70% of inquiries resolved automatically
• →Turnaround time reduced drastically — from hours or days to mere seconds for common questions
• →25% drop in call centre load