Can Robots Sell? 

Excerpt From the Business Monthly
More familiar presentation and discussion formats may better meet customers' informational and emotional needs. Case in point, while working at a university specializing in worldwide on-line education, I was very satisfied when site traffic nearly Quadrupled. Unfortunately the percentage of hits that converted into student admissions remained very small. 

When I added a friendlier inquiry screen and began automatically inviting all on-line inquiries to live telephone conferences, the results were dramatic: conversion rates increased to 50% of attendees. This telephonic "open house" allowed students to air concerns, hear the thoughts of other students, and ultimately feel a higher level of trust and comfort.

Another benefit from this activity was the ability to learn the opinions and needs of new students. A process such as this can provide an organization with a level of knowledge that could only be achieved from the continuous use of focus groups. Most importantly this approach allows more resources to be focused on the best qualified customers. Full article