We spend a lot of time (and budget) driving traffic to our websites but are we doing enough to convert these into people walking down the drive?

As marketers, it’s our role to support our sales teams to achieve their targets.

So, what do they really need?

More and more businesses are choosing to use artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots as part of their customer service and sales process. Applied successfully, chatbots have been proven to increase conversions significantly - for retirement villages prompting people to ‘walk down the drive’.

Epicor, a software company specialising in aged care and retirement solutions, recently conducted a 60-day trial of an AI chatbot. It was a great success and returned eight times the investment of the bot during the trial. They have said they are now looking at expanding the chatbot globally.

So, what are the key advantages for retirement villages to use AI chatbots?

1. Rapid Answers

Chatbots never sleep which is a huge benefit for our sector as many of our target audience (especially the children of the retirees) are researching after office hours.

Consumers are also becoming increasingly impatient so not having to wait for an email or phone call response will benefit their overall customer experience.

2. Less work

Chatbots can handle a high volume of enquiries and are ideal to respond to frequently asked questions. They also don’t need the time that humans do to research and write a response.

It goes without saying that this also frees up time for your sales staff.

3. Increased customer engagement

AI chatbots can offer small bits of information at a time so that they don’t exhaust a customer like a heavy email can do. They can also start conversations based on the type of information your consumers are searching, they can send photos, documents and direct the user to other pages of the site.

They are smart enough to maintain a conversation and can keep customers on your website for longer.

Plug and play solutions such as ChatBot are very popular.

My recommendation is to run a trial to see how it can work in your business. Remember, a chatbot shouldn’t completely replace a human, it’s about finding with the perfect combination of both.

Allison