For every dollar American soccer club Louisville City FC invests in AI digital assistant provider Conversica, the club gets back $4.60.
The club began using the AI prospect engagement software vendor’s platform in December 2021 to support lead generation by its sales team. Recently, a team in the USL Championship League, the second division of professional soccer in the United States, opted to renew its contract with Bender.
“This saves our sales team a lot of time,” says Evan Alvarez, business intelligence manager for the City of Louisville. “We were able to close a lot of deals through this platform.”
“Lucity” process
Football teams market through the Conversica platform to consumers interested in purchasing season tickets and other membership products. Digital assistants send up to 7 emails to leads, filter out bad leads, and send good leads to human sales reps to help close deals.
“It really starts with the lead generation process,” Alvarez said. This involves a variety of mediums, such as surveys on the team’s website and Facebook ads.
“From there, our digital assistants do the heavy lifting,” added Alvarez.
Since using Conversica’s digital assistant, Lou City has sent over 250,000 emails. In the past nearly six months, the team has made more than $100,000 in sales through Conversica, Alvarez said.
Lou City is also testing Conversica’s chatbot customer service features on its website.
Conversation automation
As an intelligent virtual assistant platform, Conversica’s AI assistants communicate with email, phone calls, messaging and chatbots. This technology communicates in 75 languages and helps marketing, sales, and customer engagement teams.
Conversica CEO Jim Kaskade referred to the concept of having a digital assistant create emails and texts that sound as if they were sent by a human being, saying, “Having a powerful, human conversation with a prospect or existing customer is the power of digital. people,” he said. “You’re either trying to turn people into customers, or you’re trying to turn existing customers into advocates,” he said.
“In any case, we have AI that essentially represents the company working as the best version of the company’s employees, helping them grow their bottom line,” he continued.
Lou City uses Conversica’s email digital assistant as well as chatbot functionality on its website.
The reality of what some call the AI digital workforce comes from the evolution of business-to-business conversation automation technology over the past five years or so.
Forrester Research analyst Jesse Johnson notes that the rapid pace of growth is an indication that “providers are taking the initiative and striving to meet and exceed the expectations of buyers and customers who make decisions as a group.” said to have brought about significant development.
Companies looking to monetize B2B marketing typically look for tools that can automate threaded conversations across different channels and applications.
The technology can also help recommend content to consumers and help human employees fill conversation gaps, Johnson said.
Challenge and the Milwaukee Bucks
However, there are still some problems with conversation automation technology.
First, Johnson said some organizations need to use these tools more strategically.
For example, an organization can take a different approach from a digital assistant and say, “Would you like to make an appointment to speak with one of our representatives about joining a membership plan?”
Alternatively, a virtual worker could express the message in another way that delivers immediate value to the customer: Discounts on upcoming home games. Interested in this offer? Would you like to check the member price?”
We have been able to close many sales through this platform.
Evan AlvarezBusiness Intelligence Manager, Louisville City FC
Another challenge is finding the right moment to hand off a conversation initiated by a virtual assistant to the sales team. However, it can be more problematic within a particular company or organization.
Finally, Johnson added, organizations operating disconnected data repositories have difficulty providing high-quality data to drive conversations that digital assistants can use.
“B2B marketers need to be careful about capturing all available conversational data elements without having a clearly defined strategy for how that data is acquired, processed, stored, integrated and maintained. there is,” she said.
NBA franchise email marketing manager Justin Price said the Milwaukee Bucks’ National Basketball Association franchise’s use of Conversica’s AI digital assistant is intentional.
The basketball organization started using the technology late in the coronavirus pandemic when public spaces began to reopen.
“For us, it was all about connecting customers and salespeople at scale,” Price said. “We want to help our sales teams work to their full potential. [and] We are allowed to do just that if the leads are more attractive. ”
About 40% of the leads generated during the 2022-2023 season came from sales assistants at Conversica, Price said.
Despite the success of AI digital assistants, one of the drawbacks of the technology is the need for further communication after consumers respond positively, he said.
It can be beneficial for the Conversica digital agent to continue the conversation with the consumer so that the email thread between the prospect and the digital assistant doesn’t seem to end abruptly.
“Someone could end up going through the flow and interacting with our sales assistants multiple times,” Price said. “We want our conversations to look as natural and human as possible.”
Lu City gets help from humans
Involving humans helped Lu City overcome some of the challenges it faces when using AI digital assistants, Alvarez said.
For example, if a digital assistant routes leads who answered “probably” to the initial call into the “no” group, the human worker will look for those types of misroutes on the Conversica platform and resolve them. to reroute leads and override digital assistants.
“This can happen, for example, when a digital assistant picks up the wrong word and focuses it accordingly,” Alvarez said. “But we have the necessary manpower to fix it manually.”
Using the chatbot feature can result in incorrect answers to questions if the bot recognizes the wrong word, so the organization is currently working with Conversica’s chatbot team to fix these glitches .
For customers considering Conversica’s platform, the entry price is approximately $75,000 per year.
“We tend to sell it in the same way that we sell a person’s role,” Cascade says. “This works as one of his employees. It’s the most effective version of staff because it allows you to do things in the best possible way. It also allows you to do it at scale.”
Conversica has raised $132 million in equity financing since 2013, when it changed its name from AutoFerret.com and moved from Bellingham, WA to Foster City, CA.
The company’s competitors in the AI conversational chatbot market include Kore.ai, Omilia, Avaamo and Cognigy.
Esther Ajao is a news writer covering artificial intelligence software and systems.
