Movies Chatbot for Cinema City, Israel's leading Movie Theaters
Ori Basham – IT Manager https://www.cinema-city.co.il/Introduce your business and tell us about yourself: What does your business do? What is your role?
My name is Ori, and I'm the IT manager for Cinema-City. Among others, I'm the chain's digital and online activity manager.
Cinema-City is the leading cinema chain in Israel and was founded in 2002.
The chain has branches in Israel largest cities and includes dozens of the most advanced movie theaters in the world.
We have thousands of customers who come to our theaters every day to enjoy high-definition movies, hosted in our VIP lounges, watching kids plays, live shows, and using our branches for hosting events and conventions.
Cinema-City’s website is managing about a million visitors per month who want to find information about movies show times, get answers to their questions, ask about activities for kids, watch live shows, and check out the discounts and benefits available. The main goal of the website is to sell movie tickets online.
What problems/challenges did you have and why did you decide to create a Chatbot?
We have many challenges on our digital platforms, and we are always looking for new solutions to improve Cinema-City’s digital presence. The problems we face are increasing our online tickets sales, providing excellent customer service, and branding Cinema-City as the leading innovative company.
Our website has about a million visitors each month that need help with getting answers to their questions, looking for movies recommendations, and ordering tickets. These days people are searching for quick solutions and are not interested in waiting in line for a representative to become available. They want to get answers relevant to them and order tickets quickly and easily from their sofa at home, their office or via their smartphone wherever they are. We've invested a lot of time and money in designing our website, adding features, systems, and different solutions – but nothing brought us the required results of online ticket sales.
We've decided to add VirtualSpirits Chatbot for Sales to our website to provide relevant information and improve our customer service, to reduce incoming support calls and emails, and to increase online ticket sales. It was essential for us that the chatbot could read movie details and information directly from our website, and that it could show them to the visitors inside the chatbot window in a convenient way, and easily integrate with our online ordering system. We also wanted the chatbot to provide quick answers to our customer's questions, talk with them, understand their needs, and find the best solution for them. Everything needed to be smooth and personal, no waiting times and on the way, they choose to do it from their home computer and their mobile phones.
What was the result of adding your Chatbot to your business/website? And what did you learn from it?
We were amazed to see a sharp increase in our online ticket sales since we added the chatbot for sales to our website and our mobile site. The chatbot is engaging our website visitors, helping them find the movie they want to see and the show times. It allows visitors to find movie recommendations, watch trailers, and read reviews. It is leading thousands of customers every month to our shopping cart for ordering tickets.
We received great comments from our customers about the useful and relevant information they get. With the help of VirtualSpirits Chatbot AI Self-Learning, we've managed to improve the chatbot and add answers to new questions that were learned from real conversations with our customers. Since we've added the chatbot, our customers no longer have to search for the information on the website, and the number of incoming support calls and emails has dropped dramatically.
Adding the chatbot for sales to our website has created a buzz about it and strengthened the Cinema-City brand as an innovative and leading company. When formulating the answers well, the customers are happy, and we get great feedback. We were amazed by the fact that our customers are helping us to improve the solutions by leaving comments in the chatbot for the answers they would want to get. This way we can get to know our customers better, understand their needs, find weak spots and improve them in the chatbot and on our website itself.
What are your top recommendations for businesses just starting with their own Chatbot?
I would recommend following the updates the chatbot's AI self-learning is sending you. It is incredible how the AI self-learning is making the chatbot's management and improvement very simple. It is worthwhile following the system recommendations for new questions learned from real conversations with visitors, and if there is a need to add new answers or improve existing answers – then do it! Working together with the AI self-learning engine brings fantastic results!