From conversation to CRM in seconds: AI-powered lead capture at trade shows
With a custom-built, sovereign AI agent, packaging specialist Jokey automated lead capture at trade fairs—eliminating manual CRM data entry and seamlessly closing the gap between customer conversations and the CRM system.
The Jokey Group is a company in the plastics processing industry. For more than 55 years, the Jokey name has stood for a high level of expertise in plastic injection molding and customer-focused service. With 2,100 employees, the group operates 14 plants in 11 countries and supplies customers in approximately 80 countries. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Wipperfürth, Germany, the company is managed by the second and third generations of the Kemmerich family. Launched in 2023, the subsidiary brand KeepIn represents Jokeys' reusable product line and offers, among other items, trays, bowls, and coffee cups in various sizes. All products are customizable and are manufactured in Germany.
The project at a glance
- 320 trade show leads captured digitally immediately after customer conversations—without manual CRM entry
- Custom AI agent developed for fully automated analysis of business card images and voice notes
- Fully sovereign on-premises deployment on Jokey's own NVIDIA DGX Spark infrastructure
- Lead capture process reduced to approximately one minute per contact, including user validation
- Highly reliable AI interaction resulted in strong adoption across the sales team
- End-to-end solution delivered in just six weeks—ready in time for the start of the trade show
Background
Every three years, the global packaging industry gathers at Interpack—Jokey Group's most important sales event of the year. During a single week, 27 sales representatives from around the world hold more than 300 in-depth customer conversations at the company's booth.
Capturing and processing these valuable contacts had long been a challenge. Sales representatives either took handwritten notes during conversations or spent their evenings entering information into their laptops.
Besides creating a significant administrative burden, this manual process also caused a break in the company's data flow. Since the existing CRM system was perceived as cumbersome to use, many valuable trade show leads never made it into the database. Without reliable CRM data, management lacked the foundation for accurate sales forecasting, meaningful reporting, and efficient pipeline management. Jokey therefore set out to find a modern, intuitive solution that would enable sales teams to capture customer information directly at the booth and transfer it seamlessly into their CRM system.
Solution
Within an agile project lasting only six weeks, codecentric developed a tailor-made AI agent designed specifically for sales representatives working at trade shows. The user interface is based on the open-source platform Open WebUI, providing a familiar ChatGPT-like experience. Using the solution is straightforward: immediately after a customer meeting, the sales representative simply photographs the visitor's badge or business card and records a short voice note using their smartphone.
Behind the scenes, a custom plug-in developed by codecentric orchestrates several AI-powered capabilities through an intelligent LLM agent. A machine learning model extracts contact information from the captured image, while a second component accurately transcribes the spoken notes. A large language model (Qwen 35B) interprets the sales representative's intent and determines whether a new CRM record should be created or an existing contact updated. If necessary, missing information is supplemented with placeholder values, and all data is structured automatically. Before anything is written to the CRM system through a custom-built integration, the sales representative reviews the extracted information in a short interactive chat and approves it with a single message.
A key differentiator of the solution is its architecture: rather than relying on cloud infrastructure, the entire system runs locally on Jokey's own NVIDIA DGX Spark platform. This on-premises deployment provides complete data sovereignty, maximum independence, and low operating costs. Python and FastAPI provide the high-performance backend powering the application.
Close collaboration throughout the project proved to be a major success factor. After only two weeks, the sales team was already testing the first prototypes. Their continuous feedback helped identify edge cases early and continuously improve the solution. The strong commitment of both Jokey's internal project team and future users ensured outstanding user acceptance from day one.
Result
The project went live exactly in time for Interpack and immediately proved its value under real trade show conditions. During the exhibition week, more than 2,000 chat interactions were processed with an exceptionally high level of accuracy. Instead of spending evenings trying to reconstruct conversations and manually maintaining customer records, sales representatives were now able to complete the entire process—from recording a voice note to storing validated information in the CRM—in roughly one minute.
As a result, leads could be finalized directly at the exhibition booth between customer meetings instead of accumulating handwritten notes for later processing. The biggest achievement, however, was twofold. First, the administrative workload for the sales team was notably reduced. Second, Jokey's CRM system was automatically populated with structured, validated, real-time customer data for the first time. Management now has complete pipeline visibility and can generate significantly more reliable forecasts.
Christof Kölschbach
Managing Director (CSO), Jokey Gummersbach SE
The successful introduction of this AI agent demonstrates the tremendous potential of intelligent AI support for sales processes. We see it as an important step toward a future where AI automates administrative work, makes knowledge readily available, and gives our employees more time for what truly matters: building strong customer relationships.
Christof Kölschbach
Managing Director (CSO), Jokey Gummersbach SE
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Daniel Töws