New Conversational Artificial Intelligence Proven to Convert More Leads into Opportunities
FranConnect, the leading provider of franchise management solutions for driving success in franchise sales, operations, and marketing, today announced a partnership with Lumin.ai, a technology platform that uses conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to convert more leads into sales opportunities. FranConnect’s customers can now leverage the integration of Lumin.ai to dramatically improve their franchise development efforts by automating and streamlining the early stages of their sales process — leading to a much higher conversion rate than traditional, manual sales tactics.
The Conversational AI solution works behind the scenes 24/7 to provide franchise sales teams with more efficient, immediate engagement of prospective franchisees. The SMS-based AI bot, based on the Lumin.ai Smart Scheduler, arranges introductory sales conversations and automatically populates calendars, seamlessly integrated with FranConnect’s core Sales CRM solution.
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“After years of helping hundreds of franchise businesses improve their sales functions, we understand that ‘speed-to-lead’ is more important than ever. The Lumin.ai integration combines cutting-edge AI with user-friendly SMS communication to help FranConnect customers capture and engage leads more quickly while providing a better buyer experience in the process,” said Jaffrey Ali, Chief Product Officer. “And during a time when high-touch lead generation is not feasible, the frictionless sales process is an imperative.”
This newly-launched partnership has already garnered industry accolades as part of FranConnect’s initial launch. This past September, Floor Coverings International, a mobile floor-covering franchise, utilized FranConnect’s AI solution and was named the winner of the Franchise Update Media 2020 Innovation Awards in the Most Innovative Consumer Self-Service Tools category for its inventive use of technology to expand its system. Through this approach, Floor Coverings International reported a strong return on investment, including a 100% increase in its monthly leads from prospective franchisees and an improvement in its lead closure rate of over 40%.
“We know that ‘speed-to-lead’ makes a big difference in keeping franchisees engaged and FranConnect’s sales platform helped us leverage automation to ensure that all leads were engaged immediately,” said Tom Wood, CEO of Floor Coverings International. “FranConnect, together with Lumin.ai, has achieved the highest ROI of any platform in use by Floor Coverings International. We’re excited about what we’ll continue to achieve through this partnership.”
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Founded in 2016 by Tom Ngo, a technology veteran with extensive experience creating and managing innovation at corporations ranging from Disney to early-stage startups, Lumin.ai was created to elevate AI conversational agents to the level of collaborators, in a field where most “bots” merely take commands, gather information, and answer questions.
“In the shifting landscape of customer expectations, it has become de rigueur to start relationships on the right foot by giving prospects control over when and how to communicate,” said Tom Ngo, CEO of Lumin.ai. “Through our partnership with FranConnect, we are providing franchise brands with technology that dramatically improves their ability to differentiate in a market where potential franchisees are increasingly awash with choice.”
