Interview with Denee Coleman

Can you tell us a bit about Carlton Senior Living?

Carlton Senior Living began in the 1980s when our founder, Tom MacDonald, was exploring options for his aging mother. He recognized the need for a different kind of senior community—one where residents could enjoy delicious food, engaging activities, and personalized care, all within the privacy and comfort of home.

With his background in construction and development, Tom built Carlton’s first location in Pleasant Hill. Since then, Carlton has grown to 11 communities throughout Northern California. We offer Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care, and we are proud to be celebrating 40 years of serving seniors and their families.

How did you get connected to Carlton Senior Living?

I spent about 10 years working for a computer and business training company before taking time off to adopt three children from foster care with my husband at the time. When I returned to work, I wanted to do something that truly mattered to me. Having always had a soft spot for seniors, I decided to pursue a career in senior living.

I began at Carlton as an Activity Assistant, where I had the opportunity to connect with residents in a meaningful way every day. While running games is a part of the role, it’s about much more than that. Working in a senior community, regardless of the position, is about building relationships with residents and making them feel at home because this community is their home.

When the VP of Human Resources discovered my background in technology and marketing, she encouraged me to apply for a position at Carlton’s Home Office. Since then, I’ve held a few different positions within the company and will celebrate my 10-year work anniversary in the spring.

What were the most difficult challenges for your business?

We would miss opportunities in the evenings, holidays, and weekends, since we had just two call center agents handling live chats and phone calls. Of course, being able to answer questions and assist seniors and their families 24/7 is ideal but it simply wasn’t possible at the time. We needed a better solution for our families and for our team without the expense of an additional employee.

How did Botco.ai help you address those challenges?

Adding Botco.ai’s intelligent chat to our website has been like bringing on an extra team member. We’ve programmed our chatbots to deliver a consistent message, so every visitor gets the same information. Instead of having the same conversation repeatedly through live chat, our chatbot personas—Ana for senior living and Lauren for job seekers—answer questions and deliver information in a warm and conversational way. We can monitor these interactions and fine-tune responses based on actual user questions. Built-in generative AI is also an amazing time-saver that allows us to “train” the chatbots to deliver the right response at the right time.

What results have you been able to achieve since implementing the chatbot?

The impact was remarkable, with an ROI of 2500% in one quarter.  

The intelligent chat has been instrumental in qualifying prospective residents for Carlton. It also helps determine if our communities may not be the best fit based on budget or other deciding factors and provides users with resources to help them along in their search without waiting for a call back or return email.

Conversational language is key in our marketing and our messaging. We want to connect with people in a warm and friendly way that’s also convenient for them. Our goal is to get people the answer they need quickly and efficiently, because time is valuable to everyone. Botco.ai’s intelligent chat accomplishes that and more!

Our careers chatbot has been incredibly helpful in streamlining our hiring process. It helps answer common questions like “Are you hiring?” and directs job seekers to our employment portal and even our HR team. We programmed the careers chatbot to have a fun and outgoing personality to engage potential employees in a friendly, conversational way that makes them want to learn more about Carlton and the benefits of joining our team.

You do a lot of the programming yourself. What would you say to people who might be intimidated by the technical aspects of adopting a chatbot?

You don’t have to do any programming at all. You can hand it over to Botco.ai, they program it, and boom – your chatbot’s up and running. It’s as simple as that. It’s only as complicated as you want it to be, to be honest, and Botco’s team is there to offer support every step of the way. We recently launched SMS broadcast as a reengagement tactic and Botco’s team handled everything in bringing our vision to life.

Do you have any future plans or ideas for GenAI?

We’ll be launching a chatbot tool for fielding referrals from referral agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and hospitals. The referral contacts will be able to connect with the chatbot and provide all the information about who they’re referring within the chatbot. They won’t have to wait until business hours to connect with our team which is more convenient and efficient for everyone.

When you're not working on Carlton Senior Living, how do you like to spend your free time?

One of my hobbies is photography, and some of my photos have been used on Carlton’s website and in the chatbots. I also like to listen to live music, work in the yard and get out and explore the outdoors with my husband and five-year-old daughter. My husband, Patrick, and I actually met while working at Carlton!