My previous job was taking care of horses.

Around three years before that, I took the plunge into the e-commerce industry, in which I had absolutely no prior experience.

The stage for this new challenge is Fromcocoro Inc., whose office is located in Fukuoka, the holy land for e-commerce businesses.

Mr. Mizuki Yuasa, whom we interviewed this time, has taken on responsibility for marketing the company’s own e-commerce products there.

Mr. Yuasa, who is in charge of marketing at Fromcocoro Co.

To address one of our key challenges—improving CVR (i.e., product purchase rate)—we implemented the chatbot service “BOTCHAN.”

As a result, the CVR improved by 150%.

However, along the way there were numerous rounds of trial and error, including almost daily improvement meetings with Wakou, the customer success representative at wevnal Inc., the company that develops BOTCHAN.

In this article, I, Wakao—who worked hand in hand with Mr. Yuasa to improve the CVR—will serve as interviewer and ask about the challenges before introducing BOTCHAN and the results achieved after its implementation.

We had begun to feel that our ongoing CVR improvement measures had reached their limit.

Wako, in charge of Customer Success at wevnal

Wakosei (hereafter, “━━”): When you were considering introducing BOTCHAN, what kinds of challenges was your company facing at the time?

Yuasa (hereafter, “Yuasa”): The biggest thing is, of course, improving our CVR. Our company operates multiple e-commerce products, but at that time it was gradually becoming more and more difficult to improve our CVR.

Improving CVR requires LPO (landing page optimization), but as the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations has changed year by year, the range of expressions and wording we can use has become increasingly limited.

The website of Fromcocoro Co., Ltd.

━━ Lately, we often see news about companies being penalized for failing to comply with the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations.

Yuasa: When the CVR starts to decline, it’s only natural that the sales agencies and ASPs handling our products also become less proactive in selling them.

Because of that, I’d been thinking that we had to find some way to improve our CVR, but fundamentally changing things like the e-commerce cart system would require an enormous amount of money and effort, as you know.

Before introducing BOTCHAN, we decided to start with measures we could implement on our own right away, so we tried things like changing the order of the creatives on the landing page one by one and revising the wording within the LP.

━━ So you’ve been steadily building up a series of very down-to-earth improvements.

Yuasa: That said, we were already close to the limit with that approach as well. It took a long time for the improvement metrics to be reflected, and the effect relative to the effort required had almost plateaued.

So the sequence of events is that you began considering the introduction of a chatbot as a new measure to improve the conversion rate, correct?

One of the deciding factors is the pricing structure.

━━ As you considered introducing a chatbot to improve CVR, did you also compare and evaluate solutions from other companies?

Yuasa: We did, yes. There were even chatbot vendors who actually provided us with materials and proposals, but in the end it was difficult to move forward with implementation because the cost-effectiveness just wasn’t there...

We decided to implement BOTCHAN because its pricing structure appeared to offer a good balance between cost and effectiveness.

━━ In our case, depending on the number of acquisitions per month, you can use the service at a cost of around 100 to 200 yen per purchase, so this high cost-effectiveness is one of our strengths.

When it came to actually implementing it, did you have any concerns, Mr. Yuasa?

Yuasa: On that point, when we first introduced and started using BOTCHAN, I didn’t even understand what could constitute a risk in the first place.

Until three years ago, when I joined my current company, I was working at a riding club taking care of horses, in an environment completely unrelated to IT.

Well, I figured if I just gave it a try, it would work out somehow (laughs).

━━ When we previously had an online meeting with Mr. Yuasa, the account name wasn’t his own name, but an unfamiliar name written in katakana.

I remember fondly when I asked, “What’s that katakana name?” and you told me, “It’s the name of the horse I liked best among the ones I was in charge of,” which still makes me smile.

Yuasa: When we introduced BOTCHAN this time as well, I first asked Mr. Wako a variety of questions about the system side and about the theories that underpin its functions.

Then, based on that information, I would repeatedly ask, “In that case, is it possible to do something like this?” and so on, gradually building up my knowledge about BOTCHAN.

CVR improved by 150%, and the upsell rate also increased.

━━ How are the numbers looking after the introduction of BOTCHAN?

Yuasa: Since we implemented BOTCHAN, our CVR has improved by about 150% compared to before. In the early days after implementation, I was on the phone with you almost every day, wasn’t I, Wako-san?

━━ Yes, that’s right. We still keep in touch on a regular basis even now, but especially right after implementation, the amount of communication was particularly high.

Day after day, we were on the phone between Fukuoka and Tokyo discussing things like, “How about this kind of measure?” and “What if we tried this?”

For operational improvements after implementation, you can immediately see from BOTCHAN’s management dashboard at which questions and to what extent users are dropping off.

While reviewing that kind of data, we kept running the PDCA cycle, for example by changing the order of the questions.

An example of the BOTCHAN management screen *These are not actual figures from From COCORO.

━━ Aside from improving CVR, are there any other aspects where you feel the introduction of BOTCHAN has had a positive impact?

Yuasa: You implemented an upsell initiative after order completion, and it’s delivering extremely strong results.

Every month, we compare the post-purchase upsell rate between customers who bought products using BOTCHAN and those who used the standard cart purchase form, and the figures show that the rate via BOTCHAN is about 5% higher.

It’s also extremely valuable from an LTV perspective.

Appearance of the screen when BOTCHAN starts up

━━ We are very pleased that we have been able to support you not only in improving CVR, but also in terms of purchase unit price and LTV. We will continue to do our utmost to be of assistance to your company.

Thank you for taking the time for today’s interview.

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If you are considering implementing BOTCHAN and would like concrete advice tailored to your company’s potential use cases and current situation, please feel free to contact us.

One of our consultants will assist you.