EBO Case Studies: How This Business Used AI Assistants to Save Them From a 5-year Loss

As EBO continues to expand its operations in the UK, we meet very interesting business owners. Recently, the Head of Growth for EBO (Milan Amin) engaged in a conversation with a well-known UK based nightclub that finally put an end to their 5-year loss by using AI Assistants to increase revenue, drive customer retention and reduce churn.

Aside from the purpose of entertainment, Nightclubs are usually the last place we would expect the use of complex data-driven technology. However, it goes to show that the application of Artificial Intelligence is versatile, adaptable and most importantly quickly deployable. The notion of ‘speed’ becomes ever more critical when businesses are suffering from year on year losses. This is when the emphasis on solutions is paramount in ‘making or breaking’ the company. 

How did they do it?

There are always two parts to growth, the first is ‘plugging the leakages’ and the second is ‘propelling using leverages’. In this instance, the leakage was the original Booking Manager who was sticking to a traditional ‘old school’ form of Marketing that the industry had grown out of. Data was not being captured in a way where it could be assessed to make informative decisions and the business could unfortunately no longer rely on ‘guesswork’ to turn the company around. After some initial restructuring, this put the company in a nice place to start fresh. 

The ‘leverage’ in this instance was the AI assistant because it could leverage one user to invite the next to the Nightclub in exchange for a small token of gratitude such as a drink. The company introduced an AI Assistant that specialised in ‘customer loyalty’. Using clever psychology and an understanding of language it was able to entice users to invite their friends, and this immediately saw attendance increase to the nightclub but another 400 people on an average Friday night.

What Went Right?

Firstly, the mindset was right. It’s clear to thrive in the given market companies can no longer afford to stick to traditional orthodox methods that are also saturated by their competitors. It’s important to grow at the rate of technology and have an infrastructure that supports that. 

Secondly, it was the strategy. After adopting AI technology they were able to use paid advertising on Facebook to capture people and then take the conversation to an AI assistant on Facebook Messenger that saw the ‘opt-ins’ increase by 600 despite before never having more than 70. Messaging people on a native platform that customers are comfortable with creates a large sense of adds tremendous weight to trust.

The AI assistant would make ‘smart choices’ and use data-driven approaches to target specific demographics, the best time to message them, which offers work best with which age-groups, etc. This level of personalisation is where the industry is heading.

Once the messaging was right, and enough of an incentive was created the nightclub achieved a successful combination of acquisition and retention while simultaneously reducing churn by default as a byproduct of this change. This as inevitable as competitors in the industry were not using AI technology in a manner that allowed them to captivate and cultivate their audience. 

The overall result, and after one year of implementation the results were clear. For 5 years, the business lost ￡20,000 per annum, and for the first time since 2014 this year, they will be in a profit of ￡80,000.

Should companies consider change?

Companies should be very proud of the brands they’ve built, but recognise (as always) there’s much work to be done. AI is something that can support taking companies to the next level and as long as ‘change’ is done in a way that doesn’t impact company values, we should not be averse to it.