Enquiries arrived for Saturdays a year away, sixty a week in January, and each one needed a reply about availability, a viewing, a quote from the packages and a deposit to hold the date. Two salespeople did it by email and lost the thread on the ones who went quiet. Dates were held informally and sometimes twice. The venue wanted every enquiry answered, every viewing booked and every date secured properly.
Three things kept going wrong, and each cost the business time, money or a customer.
Three agents built on the venue's booking system and its package price list, with the sales team handling anything bespoke and the agents doing the answering, showing and securing.
The booking system held the diary and the packages; the sales team's tone lived in their best emails, which we used as the model. Anything bespoke, a menu change, a discount or a date clash, goes to a salesperson. The intake agent handled January's wave with a salesperson reading replies for the first week, and the deposits agent ran with approval on every hold for two weeks before it was trusted to hold and release dates itself.
Every enquiry gets an answer with real availability in minutes, whether it arrives at noon or midnight. Viewings are booked in one exchange rather than five, and the follow-up call is in the diary before the couple leaves. Deposits are secured in five days from the viewing rather than nineteen, and no date has been double-held since. The two salespeople spend their time with couples in the building rather than in their inboxes.
'January used to be sixty emails a week each and a spreadsheet of who we'd promised what. Now the couples who want us have paid a deposit before I've met the ones who don't.'
Sales manager
Guests messaged through the booking sites, WhatsApp and the website at all hours: parking, late checkout, allergies, a taxi at six. The owner answered from bed or the guest waited until breakfast. Cancelled rooms went unsold and the review request never got sent. They wanted every guest answered, every room sold and the owner asleep.
One in eight bookings didn't turn up on a Friday or Saturday, and the team had no time to confirm them or work the waitlist. Reviews were left to chance. They wanted full tables and a steadier reputation.
A free 45-minute call. Tell us where the time goes; we'll tell you honestly whether an agent would help and what it would save.
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