Improve inquiry handling efficiency and boost CVR with chatbot implementation. Performance-based fees and comprehensive support drive your business growth.

Many websites face the challenge of “attracting visitors but not generating results.” Uniquequest Inc., which operates “Chiisana Ososhiki,” a funeral brand that offers modern, low-cost, high-quality funeral services, was no exception. Despite solid traffic to their website, the number of conversions had plateaued, and they were unable to find a way to improve performance. To break through this situation, they chose the LINE-based solution “BOTCHAN Engagement.” In this article, we spoke in detail with Mr. Suzuki from the company’s marketing department about the specific issues they faced before implementation, the decisive factors in choosing BOTCHAN Engagement, the concrete results achieved after its introduction, and their outlook for the future.

Company Introduction: Pursuing “value beyond price.” Delivering peace of mind and trust with “Small Funerals”

"Small Funerals," operated by Uniques Co., Ltd., is a funeral brand that offers high‑quality services at low prices, tailored to the needs of today. Since the service launched in 2009, we have consistently pursued the delivery of "value beyond price" so that customers can hold a funeral with complete peace of mind. While keeping costs down, we remain uncompromising about the quality of the items and services included in each plan.

Its sincere approach and transparent pricing structure have earned strong support from many customers. Another strength is its nationwide coverage through an extensive network of partner venues across Japan, combined with comprehensive support provided by dedicated staff available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. By offering services online that anyone can use at a reassuring, fair price, the company is establishing a new standard within the industry.

Small Funeral service website:https://www.osohshiki.jp/

Team Member Introduction: Mr. Suzuki, Chief Marketing Officer who pursues business profit generation based on data

Belongs to the Marketing Department and oversees overall web customer acquisition strategy. Responsible for a wide range of marketing activities, from ad operations and SEO initiatives to branding using offline media such as flyers and newspapers. Consistently conducts data-driven analysis, with a mission to maximize business profit and the number of conversions.

Mr. Suzuki:
“Our mission is to maximize business profit and gross margin through every possible method, whether online or offline. To that end, we analyze daily figures and focus on how we can increase conversions.”

Mr. Katsuya Suzuki, Marketing Department, Uniques Co., Ltd.

Issues and background before implementation: stagnation in improvement activities leading to lost opportunities after adding LINE friends

The “Small Funerals” website was attracting a high volume of traffic, with approximately 300,000 page views per month. However, before introducing “BOTCHAN Engagement,” although users were adding the official LINE account as a friend, the proportion who went on to complete an actual application (conversion rate) had stagnated, leading to a strong sense of concern about lost business opportunities.

Mr. Suzuki:
“We had previously used a chatbot tool from another company as well, but we were not acquiring as many leads as we had expected. Despite the high volume of traffic to our website, we were missing out on many potential opportunities. With the vendor we had implemented at the time, as the number of acquisitions stagnated, there was a sense of ‘let’s just keep going quietly as we are,’ and we were receiving almost no proposals for improvement.”

At the time, after users registered via LINE, Uniqueest was producing all subsequent content in-house. However, because the number of acquisitions was having limited impact, collaboration with the vendor side was weak, and effective analysis and improvement activities were not being sufficiently carried out. Although the contract was performance-based, the sluggish growth in numbers led to a decline in priority for both parties, resulting in a situation where concrete improvement proposals and resource allocation did not progress. In other words, they had fallen into a state that could be described as a “drawback of performance-based compensation.”

To address this dual challenge of a plateauing conversion rate and insufficient analysis and improvement, the company began considering the introduction of new initiatives.

Encounter with “BOTCHAN Engagement” and the deciding factor for its implementation: a high-value proposal, commensurate with business results, that drove the replacement

Uniquest, which had been concerned about the stagnation of improvement efforts with its existing chatbot tool, was considering replacing the tool in order to achieve more effective customer communication and higher conversions. It was in this context that they first learned about “BOTCHAN Engagement,” through an introduction from an agency with whom they were already doing business.

Mr. Suzuki:
“When comparing it with our previous tools, the first thing we focused on was cost-effectiveness. Naturally, it was not just about being able to reduce costs. We took a comprehensive view of the added value offered by BOTCHAN Engagement, such as its proactive support and concrete improvement proposals, and focused on whether we could obtain a return on investment commensurate with our business outcomes.”

In addition to these expectations regarding the balance between contribution to business outcomes and cost, what most strongly encouraged Mr. Suzuki’s decision was the BOTCHAN team’s proactive attitude and the concreteness of their proposals.

Mr. Suzuki:
“From the person in charge at BOTCHAN, we proactively received concrete improvement proposals right from the consideration stage of implementation. To be frank, the company that provided the tool we had previously implemented was not very proactive in suggesting improvements, and we sensed more of a ‘maintain the status quo’ attitude. Therefore, this proactive support structure was a very significant difference, and we found it highly attractive.”

Within Uniquet’s organization, running an A/B test against the existing tool was initially considered as one of the options. However, as Mr. Suzuki compared the proposal for BOTCHAN Engagement with the stance of the existing tool’s provider, he made an early decision.

Mr. Suzuki:
“When we compared the speed of improvement and the level of concreteness in the proposals we were looking for with the support structure at that time, we saw great potential in what BOTCHAN was proposing. We concluded that, with this level of support, we could expect significantly better results.”

In this way, Uniquet Corporation decided to switch to “BOTCHAN Engagement,” placing importance not only on simple cost comparisons, but also on the ability to propose solutions and the support framework of a partner that can work together on future improvement initiatives.

Decision Criteria in the Implementation Process and at Runtime: A Cycle of Improvement Based on Smooth Transition and Service Understanding

Mr. Suzuki recalls that, once the decision was made to switch to “BOTCHAN Engagement,” the implementation process progressed smoothly.

After implementation, what Unicrest placed the greatest emphasis on was ongoing improvement activities in collaboration with BOTCHAN’s Customer Success (CS) team. To keep pace with constantly changing markets and customer needs, a variety of initiatives were carried out through regular meetings, including improving banners and profile screens to increase click-through and friend-add rates, reviewing scenarios to boost CVR, replacing offer images, and strengthening the pathways to the detailed plan pages on the website.

Mr. Suzuki:
“Given the nature of our service, our customers consider using it while experiencing deep grief and anxiety, which makes it difficult to apply standard marketing measures as they are. In the initial proposals, there were some elements where we felt there was still room to be more attuned to the unique customer psychology and sensitivities associated with our service. However, by repeatedly exchanging feedback with the CS representative on the service details, customer characteristics, and industry-specific points of caution, the quality of the proposals has steadily improved. Today, they have a deep understanding of the core of our business and, even under such challenging circumstances, they patiently develop and propose initiatives that truly lead to results, which has been extremely valuable for us.”

BOTCHAN offers proactive approaches as options for building ongoing relationships with customers, such as broadcasting messages to all friends to encourage purchases, or automatically delivering stepwise messages based on the number of days since a user was added as a friend. When making our proposal to Unicrest, we also discussed these initiatives. However, given that the company’s services are designed to be closely attuned to customers’ emotional state, and considering the possibility that customers might actually say they would prefer to avoid excessive notifications, Unicrest and the CS representatives ultimately agreed not to implement these distribution measures. In this way, by not clinging to generic success patterns and instead prioritizing the client’s business characteristics and the end-user experience while jointly exploring the most suitable communication, BOTCHAN’s approach made collaboration between the two companies significantly smoother.

Results and value after implementation: Improved conversion rate within LINE has increased acquisition efficiency

Since introducing BOTCHAN Engagement, Uniquest has been steadily seeing tangible results.

Reviewing post-friend-add communications to improve acquisition efficiency

Mr. Suzuki:
“The greatest achievement has been the improvement in the conversion rate (CVR) of customers who added our LINE Official Account as a friend. Specifically, in the months where results were particularly strong, the CVR within LINE improved by approximately 160%. As the CVR increased, the number of applications via LINE also grew steadily, enabling us to achieve significant results in terms of both efficiency and volume.”

Proactive improvement proposals and advancement of initiatives

Through regular meetings, BOTCHAN’s customer success representatives continuously propose and implement data-driven improvement measures. As a result, conversion acquisition efficiency has been improving day by day even after implementation.

Mr. Suzuki:
“Because we are able to entrust much of the operational work, including creative production, to the CS representatives, the workload on our side has been significantly reduced. At the same time, they now proactively provide us with more improvement proposals than before, which is extremely helpful.”

In this way, BOTCHAN consistently handles everything from proposing improvements to creating the creatives required for implementation, and this integrated setup, together with its speed, enables both a significant reduction in marketing man-hours and more sophisticated initiatives.

Establishing a marketing channel with strong cost performance

For Mr. Suzuki, BOTCHAN Engagement is not just a tool, but an important marketing channel positioned to efficiently drive conversions.

Mr. Suzuki:
“While keeping our operational workload under control, BOTCHAN Engagement efficiently supports us in driving conversions, so we feel it is a channel with extremely high cost performance.”

Future outlook and key initiatives: Toward deeper collaboration aimed at improving order acquisition rates

Going forward, at Uniquest we have growing expectations for “BOTCHAN Engagement” not only to increase the number of information requests, but also to propose initiatives that lead further on to actual orders.

Mr. Suzuki:
“Our ultimate goal is to maximize profit. To that end, we expect BOTCHAN to make more in‑depth proposals that will increase the likelihood (order rate) that customers who request materials will actually sign a contract for our funeral services. For example, scenarios that effectively highlight our strengths—such as our ‘track record’ and ‘price transparency’—in line with the consideration phase of prospective customers.”

Funeral services are characterized by the fact that a customer’s situation and timing have a major impact on order acquisition. In particular, even for user segments with relatively low purchase intent, such as those reached via display advertising, it is desirable to deploy initiatives that effectively approach and nurture them through “BOTCHAN Engagement.”

Advice for corporate staff facing the same challenges: “A worthwhile approach that can both reduce workload and improve results.”

Finally, Mr. Suzuki shared a message for corporate representatives facing similar challenges.

Mr. Suzuki:
“For companies that feel challenged in generating conversions from their websites, or that have already introduced chatbots but lack the resources for proper performance measurement and ongoing optimization, I believe BOTCHAN Engagement can be a highly effective option. Based on our own experience, it has the potential to significantly reduce operational workload while efficiently increasing the number of conversions. It is certainly worth at least having an initial consultation.”

By fully leveraging its potential of 300,000 monthly page views, Uniques Co., Ltd. has translated this into tangible results in the form of conversions. Through integration with “BOTCHAN Engagement,” their efforts to “be close to the customer’s heart” will continue into the future.

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