How Businesses Accelerate Lead Movement Through the Sales Funnel with AI Products: The CostCare AI Case

Improving business performance, increasing sales, and reducing lead loss are top priorities for companies in growth mode. AI products are making that possible in practice, as shown by the case study from CostCare AI, a Ukrainian startup that raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding. Paul Wahtel, Co-Founder and CEO, shares how the company helped optimise its clients’ sales operations.

In 2024, CostCare AI began working with a network of clinics operating in Ukraine and Poland — a business rapidly expanding in the health and beauty sector, one of the most dynamic markets today.

As the company scaled, it ran into a familiar challenge: sales and support managers were overwhelmed by a high volume of inbound requests, which led to poor lead conversion. Inquiries were coming in around the clock via Instagram, Telegram, Viber, phone calls, and website forms. Marketing spend was growing, inbound traffic was increasing, but team size remained the same. Potential customers expected immediate replies — even at 2 a.m. — yet often received a response only the next day, if at all.

“We would clear all the chats and reply to all, and by the next morning, they had piled up again. Instead of selling, managers spent their mornings qualifying leads. Because of that overload at the first stage of communication, we were losing a significant share of our potential revenue,” says the client company’s co-founder.

Hiring more sales managers seemed like the obvious solution. At the same time, recruiting qualified people for the client’s niche proved difficult: the hiring cycle took 30–35 days. The company often had to compromise and make offers to candidates who were already actively looking for work, and on top of that, onboarding each new hire required up to three months of in-house training involving both the team and the co-founder. Since the average tenure of a sales manager was only four months, the business found itself stuck in a constant cycle of hiring and retraining.

Increasing Conversion with AI Automation — Without Expanding the Team

At that point, the owner decided to test a different approach: bringing in CostCare AI to automate lead handling at the first point of contact and improve conversion without growing the team. CostCare AI took over incoming inquiries, request handling, and customer communication. Most importantly, the AI agent significantly accelerated consultation booking.

What initially sounded like a straightforward goal — “automate sales” — quickly revealed its complexity. As with any automation project, introducing AI came with understandable hesitation. Managers were concerned about job security, while the head of sales emphasised that the technology had to meet the high communication standards expected in health, wellness, and beauty, where trust and human interaction are especially important.

That scepticism began to disappear almost immediately during the technical onboarding. The sales and support teams saw that the product was taking over repetitive work: night shifts, after-hours conversations, unqualified inbound chats, and first-line qualification. Fear of being replaced turned into relief: the team felt supported rather than threatened, and AI became a tool for improving results.

CostCare AI is available in English and Ukrainian. The AI agent for your business from CostCare AI can communicate in chats in more than 50 languages.

Once the product was adapted and integrated into the client’s sales workflow, results started to show early. The biggest breakthrough was speed. While managers were off duty or focused on higher-value tasks, CostCare AI was still booking patients — even at 10 p.m. The time between an inquiry and a confirmed booking dropped to just minutes. Instead of waiting 13 hours for a response and going to a competitor, potential clients were getting immediate engagement. That contrast — between urgent business needs and the ability to respond 24/7 — made the value of the product obvious. At the same time, it became clear that the real impact depended not only on the AI itself but also on how effectively CostCare AI was integrated into the client’s business processes.

AI Agent Performance in Numbers

Over 16 months, the collaboration moved from a test phase to stable, ongoing operations. Today, the results are clear:

• The AI agent now handles 60–70% of all incoming inquiries — more than 1,000 requests per month that previously required manual work.

• Conversion with a single AI agent has reached 25%. Leads that would previously have been missed are now processed instantly, regardless of the time of day.

• Sales team efficiency has increased by 2.5x. Managers no longer spend their time “putting out fires” in chats and can instead focus on complex cases, accounts, and higher-value work.

• The product is now fully integrated into the team’s workflow. Managers themselves initiate quick updates and adjustments to the knowledge base. Their conclusion: after proper onboarding, working with CostCare AI is significantly more efficient.

• The business owner estimates CostCare AI’s impact as equivalent to three additional employees — the number of managers the company would otherwise have needed to hire to maintain the same response speed, service quality, and 24/7 coverage.

“An AI-based product is a key advantage in our sales process. For businesses that care about stable conversion, high communication standards, and response speed, CostCare AI is a must-have,” says the Head of Sales.

This case gave us a clear direction for further product development — not in theory, but based on real operational challenges. That long-term collaboration became the foundation for a solution that now helps deliver quality, measurable results for our clients.

What’s Next for CostCare AI

CostCare AI now has a clear development roadmap. In the near term, we are focused on scaling the solution to other industries:

• e-commerce and retail (from clothing and accessory brands to sporting goods and home products);

• health, beauty, and wellness (from medical clinics and beauty salons to fitness clubs and veterinary clinics);

• education and development (from educational platforms and courses to development centres and recording studios);

• service businesses (from photo and video services, cleaning and repair services to auto repair shops and legal and accounting consulting);

• creative industries (from marketing and event agencies to catering and floristry);

• real estate and travel (from travel agencies and hotels to real estate agencies and rental housing).

The product roadmap also includes further functionality development:

1. Custom AI agent setup and validation
   CostCare AI will enable faster configuration for specific business cases. Client teams will be able to structure knowledge files, adjust AI logic, and continue training the system using conversational feedback — without involving developers or third-party services.

2. Automatic conversation summaries
   After each dialogue with a potential customer, the AI will generate a concise summary with key insights in text, voice, or other formats. Managers will instantly see what was discussed, what questions were asked, and what stage the lead is currently in.

3. Structured data extraction with other systems
   CostCare AI is deepening its CRM integrations. A feature already available in the product allows the system to analyse conversations and automatically extract key data — such as name, contact details, needs, and budget — to populate CRM fields without manual copying.

4. Automated AI-powered sales funnel management
   The company is also developing tools for building and visualise the sales funnel. CostCare AI will track lead movement through funnel stages and automatically update statuses, giving teams full visibility without manual monitoring.

This experience has shown that CostCare AI is especially valuable for businesses that are actively scaling, handle high volumes of inbound traffic, care about their KPIs, and do not want to keep hiring additional managers just to keep up with growth.

Book a CostCare AI demo