With the management philosophy of “creating beautiful and comfortable spaces,” Katsuden Architec Co., Ltd., a building materials manufacturer, is committed to meticulous craftsmanship with an uncompromising focus on detail. The company develops highly creative products such as indoor see-through staircases and bicycle stands.
In August 2018, we revamped our website to better communicate the appeal of our products to a wider range of users. On the renewed site, “BOTCHAN EFO” has been playing a key role in improving the conversion rate.
For this interview, we spoke with Hideyuki Tajima from wevnal’s Chatbot AI Division, who is in charge of the account, and Genki Nishitaki from Katsuden Architect Co., Ltd., Sales Promotion Planning Department and Information Systems Department, about the background to implementing BOTCHAN EFO and the results it has delivered.
After the site renewal, conversions declined, and we were looking for a way to turn them around.
wevnal / Tajima (hereafter, “Tajima”):Thank you very much for taking the time to participate in this interview today. Before you implemented our BOTCHAN EFO, what challenges were you facing in operating your website?
Katsuden Architec Co., Ltd. – Mr. Nishitaki (hereafter, “Nishitaki”): Before the site renewal, we received an average of 80 document requests per month, but after the renewal that number dropped to nearly half. I suspected the cause was that, unlike on the previous site where the document request button was prominently displayed, we had moved it down to the bottom of the site…
Although we were concerned about the decline in our CV rate, we were too busy dealing with other tasks to take any concrete action. At that time, we received a sales call from Mr. Tajima at wevnal, and he explained that a chatbot is always visible on the site, which could help improve the CV rate. That led us to take an interest in BOTCHAN EFO.
Tajima: At the time of our first call, you mentioned that you had just completed the renewal and wanted to see how things would go, so I called you again a month later.
Nishitaki: On the phone, you walked me through the service’s features and functions in detail, and the fact that there is an admin dashboard was the decisive factor. Being able to see exactly where users drop off makes it much easier to run the PDCA cycle.
Tajima: In the BOCHAN EFO management dashboard, you can perform detailed analyses such as CV elapsed time and where users drop out of conversations, enabling you to implement effective measures.
Nishitaki: Even though it’s a service with clear benefits, it still meant using the company’s budget, so internal alignment was a bottleneck. But then Mr. Tajima introduced us to the “IT Implementation Subsidy,” which cuts tool implementation costs in half. Once we knew it would only cost us half, it was much easier to get internal approval to go ahead with the implementation.
Thanks to Mr. Tajima’s support with the complex procedures for the subsidy application, everything went smoothly. I am grateful for his strong support capabilities.
Tajima: Not at all, please don’t mention it.
Tajima: How was the ease of implementation?
Nishitaki: It was so easy that I barely remember doing it, since all I had to do was add a single script tag to the site’s HTML. The usability after implementation has also been excellent. In the admin panel, tasks such as rewriting scenarios and changing icons are easy to perform, and I feel the UI is intuitive to use.
Tajima: BOTCHAN EFO is truly a service that has been thoroughly designed with an easy-to-use UI.
Nishitaki: Another thing I appreciated was how easy it was to change the display position. On our website, when you scroll down a page, a “Back to top” button appears at the bottom of the screen, and it overlapped with the display position of BOTCHAN EFO. When I asked for advice about shifting that position, Mr. Tajima showed me how to write the CSS, which was extremely helpful.
Tajima: I’m glad I was able to assist so that we could accommodate your preferred arrangement.
Its appeal lies in its “flexible responsiveness,” allowing customization to meet specific requests.
Tajima: Is there anything about the support from our company that has particularly left an impression on you?
Nishitaki: Originally, BOTCHAN EFO was not integrated with our customer information management system, so you enabled API integration for us. We get about 50 to 60 conversions per month from BOTCHAN EFO, and manually entering the personal information of everyone who requests materials, one by one, would be an overwhelming task. We really appreciated your support.
Tajima: You were using a system other than the six services that BOTCHAN EFO is already integrated with via API, correct? Even for services without existing API integration, we try to link them as much as possible if requested. I was relieved when we were able to successfully integrate the customer information management system you consulted us about, Ms. Nishitaki.
Nishitaki: One more thing—we also had you set it up so that, at the time of conversion (CV), emails can be distributed and sent to 11 sales representatives by region. When a conversion comes through the inquiry form on the site, an email notification is sent to the person in charge after the CV, so I wondered if we could do the same for CVs from BOTCHAN EFO. However, the allocation logic is quite complex, so we may have caused some trouble for the team at wevnal.
Tajima: Even within the same prefecture, the allocation rules were complex, such as assigning different sales representatives when the area differed slightly. Therefore, instead of modifying the management screen, we customized the backend system. Because we have an in-house engineering team, our strength as a company is being able to respond to customer requests with one-stop development.
Nishitaki: “For example, when we said, ‘Our point of contact has changed, so we’d like to update the email routing,’ wevnal handled that kind of system customization for us many times. Whenever we shared a request, they responded in a timely manner, which was very helpful when something was urgent or when we were busy. Also, since all communication was done by phone or chat, it was easy to reach out for advice.”
Tajima: Thank you very much. I think there are some similarities with chatbots as well, but with chat you can communicate more casually than by email. I’ll continue to focus on providing quick responses! (laughs)
Improved scenarios and icons to achieve a 40% user conversion rate
Tajima: Could you share your impressions after operating it for nearly six months?
Nishitaki: “BOTCHAN EFO has now become an indispensable part of our website. After the site renewal, the number of document requests in months without new product announcements was between 46 and 77, but since implementing the tool, it has exceeded 80 every month. This February, it reached 112, the highest in recent times. Achieving these numbers even in months without new product launches is clear evidence of the impact of BOTCHAN EFO.”
Tajima: Your company’s conversion rate is among the highest of all our clients. Of the users who open BOTCHAN EFO, 40% convert, and among those who go on to enter the first question, almost all end up converting. I believe one reason for this is that the BOTCHAN EFO icon and color scheme you specified, Mr. Nishitaki, match your site very well, so users feel no resistance to clicking on it.
Nishitaki: To further increase effectiveness, we have already revised the scenario about twice. For example, we previously placed a “catalog selection question” at the beginning of the conversation, but the BOTCHAN EFO management screen showed that user drop-off at this question was high.
From this, we formed the hypothesis that “users are probably dropping off because it’s troublesome to choose the type of catalog they want to request.” We therefore removed the catalog selection question and decided to send all types of catalogs. As a result of these kinds of improvements, the number of document requests coming through BOTCHAN EFO is now higher than through our other forms.
Tajima: We’re seeing excellent results, and I’m very pleased as the person in charge. Finally, may I ask what you expect from our company going forward?
Nishitaki: From now on, we plan to focus not only on our core staircase products, but also on exterior items such as bicycle stands. To help drive inquiries for these as well, we would like to learn know-how that can further improve CV. To surpass our record-high number of brochure requests, we want to achieve 170 conversions in one month.
Tajima: Understood. I will also share marketing insights, including know-how and best practices that have successfully increased CVs at other companies. I will continue to support you toward achieving your goals.
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