How Wrike’s Chatbot Transformation is Pumping up Pipeline And Raking in ROI

Wrike, an intelligent work management platform, serves more than 20,000 organizations and is on a mission to help you do the best work of your life.. Like many companies big and small in recent years, Wrike found itself in a position of needing to focus on the most impactful initiatives driving the bottom line. This included how they were engaging with visitors to their website, which is packed with both product information and valuable resources for best practices on project management. Always on the leading edge themselves technologically, Wrike’s embrace of artificial intelligence (AI) in business solutions put them at the center of a unique digital transformation tale involving Drift chatbots — and resulting in huge pipeline growth, increased bookings, and fast, healthy ROI.

Challenge

Nearly every business can recognize themselves in the challenges Wrike was facing. A resource-strapped sales team needed to spend their time pursuing high-quality leads rather than answering product questions. Trial users needed to be converted at higher levels. And all visitors to their website — whether a “hot” lead checking out the pricing page, or a student user looking for project management resources for a class paper —  deserved the smoothest, fastest, most relevant experience with Wrike.

Layered on top of these issues was the incredibly fast-paced evolution of AI and how it is influencing prospect behavior and expectations.

Legacy chatbot just too limited

Wrike’s path to Drift chatbots started with the desire to improve the conversions on Wrike’s website. According to Alla Mosina, Wrike’s former Website Product Manager, “We were looking to add some personalization flows, but our legacy chat tool had a lot of drawbacks. It was very limited in its functionality — if a sales rep was offline, it was just a form.  And it wasn't integrated with our tech stack.”

As a global company with customers and prospects in different regions (and time zones) around the world, limits like these just weren’t workable anymore if Wrike wished to achieve their goal of increased conversions. Their team began the search for a more modern, more comprehensive chat tool — which led them directly to Drift.

Solution

Through conversations and demos, Wrike discovered that Drift’s chatbots could resolve several key pain points for them, including:

• Booking meetings when reps were offline
• Performing lead qualification
• Intelligently routing leads
• Easily integrating with key sales tech such as Salesforce and Marketo
• Allowing for hypothesis testing for ABM flows

In moving forward, Wrike chose to begin with a gradual rollout — starting with a small pilot for five SDRs in the company’s main market, North America. At the beginning, they worked off of two or three main playbooks, and then the (impressive) results were calculated. With value proven, the Wrike team began promoting the technology across the organization to other SDR teams. Over several months, they expanded usage to the EMEA region, added more reps from North America, and created more playbooks, including playbooks in additional languages. And it turned out to be just the beginning.

Plot twist: ever-advancing AI leads to a new leap forward

With the success Wrike was enjoying using the Drift conversational AI (CAI) chatbot, it’s no wonder they were eager to be one of the first to try Drift’s “next big thing,” Bionic Chatbots. While their previous Drift chatbots used predetermined responses set up by the Wrike team, Bionic Chatbots take a giant leap forward. Utilizing existing Wrike content simply curated and uploaded into Drift, Bionic Chatbots create AI-generated responses until either sales intent or support intent is detected. At that point, the bot exits the AI response node and continues the conversation as designed. As a member of the Bionic Chatbots Early Access Program (EAP), Wrike got in on the ground floor with this revolutionary evolution of conversational marketing.

Freedom, security, and flexibility — there’s no looking back now

With guidance from their Drift account team, Wrike uploaded selected content into the Bionic Chatbot’s content library. Once that was complete, the buildout process began. Existing prompts and playbooks can be easily edited, making setup and launch quick and smooth. Once activated, the Bionic Chatbots gave Wrike’s site visitors the freedom, security, and flexibility to take the conversation wherever they need it to go. Instead of fixed responses and decision trees, prospects now lead the conversation, with the Bionics Chatbot shifting seamlessly between topics as needed — speaking in Wrike’s brand voice.

Life in the Fastlane

Another key Drift chatbot functionality that Wrike has embraced is Fastlane, which allows them to qualify leads in real time. Fastlane lets Wrike’s best buyers skip the form queue by referencing Wrike’s tech stack data to qualify them in real time — no more forcing hot leads to cool their heels waiting hours or days for follow-up. After Fastlane qualifies Wrike’s buyers, they are instantly routed to sales so they can jump straight into a conversation without ever leaving your website. Finally, Wrike’s prospects can now book meetings directly from the chat. If a buyer is too busy for a live conversation, Fastlane lets them book a future meeting with a dedicated rep.

In her experience, Alla has seen a huge impact from Fastlane.

She continues, “A customer shouldn't wait for a sales rep to contact them, and now they can just create the meeting in the calendar. We’re removing several steps from this process. And that's really cool, especially because we don't lose some leads with this process.”

Results

Post-implementation, the Wrike team reported eagerness, satisfaction, and increased adoption rates — which is certainly ego-boosting for Drift. But the real validation of any investment is a boost in the bottom line of the adopter. Here’s what Wrike’s usage of Drift chatbots has yielded in hard numbers:

• 496% increase in contributed pipeline year over year (2023 compared with 2022)
• 454% increase in contributed bookings year over year (2023 compared with 2022)
• 15x+ ROI since Drift Fastlane and Drift AI features were implemented

While incredibly rewarding, numbers aren’t everything — or at least, not the only thing. There’s also value in the time it takes to set up, onboard, and promote adoption of any new technology. Wrike had the unique experience of working with Drift’s CAI chatbot as well as the Bionic chatbot. While implementing and operating the CAI chatbot was a smooth-enough experience, the good news is that it just keeps getting better.

Anna Fomina, Wrike's Marketing Technology Manager, confirms that experience. “The implementation [of Bionic Chatbots] was even simpler. For CAI, we had to think of all the responses ourselves and then review them with our content marketing team," explains Anna. "With the Bionic Chatbots, we just had to choose the resources we want to train it on and then just review, rank, and think of improvements."

In addition to sharing her experiences with Drift chatbots overall, Anna also has a prediction to share with anyone considering the Bionic Chatbot. “I think this is the future solution, and it's where conversational marketing will go. Test it yourself and see how it works.”

Ready to see how Drift chat from Salesloft can work for you? Request a demo now.