Qualimero×Rasendoktor
Success Story · Garden & Lawn Care

How Rasendoktor automates 100% of its advice-intensive lawn care inquiries

2,000 to 3,000 expert inquiries per month in season, two markets, an overloaded support team: how the lawn care specialist automated its product consultation with AI employee Hektor. Causally measured in an A/B test.

16×

Return on Investment

100%

Webchat automation rate

+4.20%

Incremental revenue per visitor

causally measured in an ongoing A/B test

Executive Summary

Expert consultation that scales with the season.

In season, Rasendoktor received 2,000 to 3,000 advice-intensive inquiries per month. Product variety and demanding applications led to long waiting times and a clearly overloaded support team, while every answer had to meet the expert standard of the brand.

Today, AI employee Hektor answers inquiries via webchat and email automatically, around the clock, including photo diagnosis of lawn problems and with the regional differences between Germany and Austria taken into account. Support effort dropped by 40 percent, with a return on investment of 16 times. The ongoing A/B test shows a causal incremental revenue of +4.20% per visitor versus the control group.

The client

Thirty years of lawn expertise as the brand core.

Rasendoktor is a leading provider of high-quality lawn care products such as professional fertilizers and seed, operated by TURF Handels-GmbH from Gratkorn near Graz. The company has been maintaining high-quality grass surfaces since 1994, from golf courses to sports grounds, and brings this professional expertise to demanding hobby gardeners and professionals in Germany and Austria via rasendoktor.de.

Deep consultation is a prerequisite for buying here: without the right application, even the best product delivers no result.

1994

founded

15+

specialists on the team

DE · AT

markets

2,000–3,000

inquiries per month in season

The starting point

Three structural challenges

01

Seasonal inquiry waves with expert-level demands

During the season, 2,000 to 3,000 inquiries arrived per month, many requiring deep expert knowledge of specific lawn problems and application questions. The result was long waiting times and an overloaded support team that could not scale with the shop without disproportionately increasing operating costs.

02

Consultation quality as a brand promise

Every answer had to meet the Rasendoktor expert standard and stay on-brand. Generic chatbot replies were out of the question, because they would have directly damaged the positioning as a specialist provider.

03

Two markets, no capacity for a major project

Prices and availability differ between Germany and Austria and had to be handled automatically. At the same time, the solution could neither require a lengthy implementation project nor put excessive load on internal resources.

The approach

Five design principles of the implementation.

The evaluation ran together with partner agency bilberry consulting. Go-live followed within a few days.

Domain exclusivity.

Hektor is trained exclusively on Rasendoktor content and expert knowledge. That keeps answers precise and on-brand.

Regional differentiation.

Product availability and prices for Germany and Austria are handled automatically.

Integration without project load.

Qualimero handled most of the technical implementation; the effort for the Rasendoktor team stayed minimal.

Diagnosis from a photo.

Hektor recognizes lawn problems on customer photos and recommends the right product including application.

Controlled learning.

Hektor refines his answers with every interaction, always within the defined knowledge.

The impact

Three effects from ongoing operation.

The webchat is fully automated

Hektor answers 100 percent of webchat inquiries automatically, including seasonal peaks. Support effort dropped by 40 percent, and the team focuses on the demanding cases.

Incremental revenue is causally measured

The ongoing A/B test with a control group shows +4.20% revenue per visitor, measured across 5,598 buyers among almost one million users. This results in the 16 times return on investment.

Answers in seconds instead of days

Customers receive answers even to complex inquiries in 18 seconds on average, around the clock and consistently at the expert level of the brand.

Hektor live as webchat on rasendoktor.de

Hektor live on rasendoktor.de: photo diagnosis of a lawn problem with a concrete product recommendation, in the brand context of the current campaign with Ralf Rangnick.

If you want consultation at this level running in your shop too:

Try free for 14 days

The numbers

Values from ongoing operation.

Conversation data from four weeks (May to June 2026). Revenue impact is causally measured in an A/B test with a control group.

Hektor

Hektor

AI lawn expert

  • Scope

    Product consultation & application support

  • Channels

    Webchat · Email

  • Markets

    DE · AT

  • Languages

    100+

  • Return on Investment

    16×

  • Incremental revenue per visitor vs. control

    +4.20%1

  • Webchat automation rate

    100%

  • Support savings

    40%

  • Conversations (4 weeks)

    9372

  • Avg. response time

    18 sec3

  • Messages per chat

    10.94

  • Satisfaction

    7.9 / 105

  • Topic distribution

    49.8% consultation · 39.9% application · 3.5% sales6

  1. 1ongoing A/B test 90/10, 5,598 buyers among 988,765 users
  2. 2May 14 to June 11, 2026, webchat
  3. 3measured across all conversations
  4. 4user and AI combined
  5. 5chat-end survey
  6. 6classified via conversation analysis

What Rasendoktor evaluated

Four criteria. All met.

Standard chatbots were ruled out early because they offered neither the expertise nor the required precision.

“The precision with which Hektor applies our expertise to recommend products is impressive. He answers customer inquiries not only quickly but precisely and in line with our consultation standards. The integration was surprisingly straightforward, and our team can now fully focus on the demanding cases.”

René Deutsch

CEO, TURF Handels-GmbH

Rasendoktor

Transferability

An application business needs application consultation.

Lawn care is an application business: the product only works if dosage, timing and procedure are right. That is exactly why consultation was the bottleneck at Rasendoktor, long before traffic was.

AI-supported product consultation resolves this bottleneck, provided it verifiably reflects the expertise, stays on-brand and proves its impact causally.

We will build this for your business too.

Try free for 14 days

More stories like this

Consultation depth in other industries, same playbook.

Retail / E-commerce (Pool & Wellness)

Pooldoktor

33×

Return on Investment

Incremental revenue per visitor

+18.75%

Avg. response time

13 sec

Retail / E-commerce (Garden Supplies)

Neudorff

97.5%

Accuracy in product recommendations

Return on Investment

20–25×

Avg. response time

<15 sec

Retail / E-commerce (Garden & Wellness)

Gartenfreunde

6×

Return on Investment

Higher conversion rate

7×

Click rate on recommendations

45%

Your AI employee. Live in seconds.

Trained on your products. In your brand.

A/B test with control group — revenue lift measurable.

Setup in seconds·No minimum term·Per conversation
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