Waseda Beauty College boasts an impressive track record, including producing star hairstylist Takuya Takagi, who has appeared three times on NHK’s “Professional: Shigoto no Ryuugi” (“Professional: The Way of Work”).
Founded in 1999 and now in its 23rd fiscal year (as of 2021), the school still has a relatively short history compared with other beauty schools in Tokyo, such as Nippon Beauty College (founded in 1954) and Yamano College of Aesthetics (founded in 1934).
However, this school is rapidly gaining both popularity and recognition today thanks to a flexible, up‑to‑date curriculum that goes beyond simple beauty techniques, incorporating classes such as “how to use social media effectively.”
In this article, we interview Public Relations representative Shinpei Monma, who was in charge of one of the initiatives to attract more students: implementing a chatbot on the company’s website.
Ms. Monma, who is in charge of public relations at Waseda Beauty College
With the prolonged impact of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) making it difficult to conduct in-person campus tours, how did Waseda Beauty College maintain its points of contact with prospective students?
The speaker is Kaito Takayanagi, Customer Success Manager at wevnal Inc., the company that develops the chatbot “BOTCHAN.”
(*This interview was conducted before the state of emergency was declared.)
We gave our company website a pop makeover, but the plainness of the input form still can’t be shaken off...
Takayanagi, who was in charge of Waseda Beauty College as a customer success manager at wevnal
Takayanagi (hereafter, ━━): What initially prompted you to become interested in introducing a chatbot?
Mr. Monma (hereafter, “Monma”): I felt that the way we handled brochure requests and open campus registrations on our own website was plain and uninteresting.
The input form that had previously been used on the Waseda Beauty College website
━━ I see. On the other hand, the first page that appears when you visit the site has motion and color, and it feels very playful.
Top page of the Waseda Beauty College website
Monma: We revised the site as much as possible with a focus on adding pop elements, including the design and wording, but the application input form still inevitably retains a somewhat bureaucratic feel.
Just when I was wondering what to do, an acquaintance introduced me to your company’s BOTCHAN.
For teenagers, communicating in chat format is easy and convenient.
━━ So you have implemented our chatbot as a new method for handling information requests and open campus registrations.
BOTCHAN installed at the bottom right of the site
Monma: I think that for teenagers in high school, exchanging information in a chat format is something they’re already very familiar with from using things like LINE or Instagram DMs in their daily lives.
We designed and implemented this with the aim of providing students with a natural, easy-to-use input form.
━━ Since implementing it, how have you felt about the results?
Monma: To be honest, when we first installed it, there wasn’t all that much of a reaction.
However, as we continued operating it little by little, the numbers began to stabilize, and now it has become an important online point of contact for both the students and us.
The “online information session” that has become a new pillar of customer acquisition
━━ When we talk about an online point of contact, we also added a new option, “online information sessions,” within the chatbot as part of our response to the current COVID-19 situation, didn’t we?
Monma: That’s right. Before COVID spread this far, we had hardly ever held online information sessions.
Including creating the presentation materials in PowerPoint, at the beginning we were really feeling our way forward.
Scenario in BOTCHAN with “Online Information Session” added as an option
Monma: Ideally, of course, we would like people to actually come here in person and see the campus for themselves.
Waseda Beauty College has been gradually gaining recognition, and with the students enrolling this coming spring, we will finally have students enrolled from high schools in all 47 prefectures across Japan.
However, as expected, I really can’t ask students from regional areas to “come all the way to Tokyo.”
━━ Given the current COVID situation, it’s quite difficult, isn’t it.
Monma: In that respect, it was good that we were able to use a chatbot to communicate with students on the web. Our online information sessions have now become a solid pillar of our customer acquisition efforts.
Including us, many schools and educational institutions have limited technical expertise, so even when they introduce new tools, I think it’s quite common that they struggle to make effective use of them.
Thanks to the support from Mr. Takayanagi and the rest of the BOTCHAN customer success team, we were able to implement it properly and are seeing real results, which we appreciate very much.
━━ That’s because Mr. Monma has been very proactive in trying to make full use of it.
As a company, we are very pleased to see someone like Mr. Monma so proactively asking about and looking into BOTCHAN.
We want to strengthen two-way communication so we can win that once-a-year high-stakes gamble.
━━ Finally, we would like to ask about Waseda Beauty School’s future outlook and how BOTCHAN may be able to support you in that context.
Monma: This may end up being a bit speculative, but going forward I think it would be interesting if we could actively incorporate AI (artificial intelligence) technology so that everything from hearing out inquiries from students to follow-up support could be handled automatically.
━━ Indeed, that does sound interesting.
Monma: In the end, the work I’m doing—“how much can I increase the number of students who become interested in Waseda Beauty College?”—only shows results once a year, during the entrance exam period. Every year it feels like I’m making one big bet, once a year. (laughs)
━━ In the kind of IT work we usually do, we see results in seconds or minutes, so our sense of things in that regard might be completely different.
Monma: That’s exactly why I want to place importance on two-way communication, so that we can help more students learn about the appeal of this school, even just a little, and get them interested.
One of those things, I believe, is communicating via social media such as Instagram, and using chatbots on our website to handle inquiries.
━━ Yes, exactly. Our BOTCHAN is also being improved on a daily basis, and we hope to continue supporting you in attracting customers.
Thank you very much for taking the time for today’s interview.
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