The hospitality industry is leaving money in their inbox

One birthday cake question, hundreds of venues, and a lot of unanswered emails.

A third of the customer emails we sent to hospitality venues never got a reply, and fewer than 15% of the venues that did answer tried to take a booking. We know because we emailed hundreds of them one simple question: could we bring a birthday cake?

The question came from our customers. Several worried about enquiries going unanswered, and it pushed us to consider what became the unified inbox in Stampede. So we ran mystery-shopping style research into how venues respond to a specific customer enquiry: how fast they reply, whether they reply at all, and whether they use the chance to offer a booking. That last one is an easy sell and a great revenue opportunity. Birthdays = big bucks.

The hypothesis

We went in with two hypotheses:

1. The majority of businesses take more than 24 hours to reply to an inbound email, sent to their contact address, asking about bringing a birthday cake.

2. The majority of replies contain an offer to take a booking or a link to the booking system.

The first came from watching venues run short-staffed: inboxes not monitored all the time, nobody dedicated to requests, and our own recent experiences trying to book tables. The second from a simple rule. Every contact with a customer is a source of possible revenue, and here the customer makes the first move, so it should be a straightforward sale.

While carrying out the research we monitored several key metrics:

• Reply time

• Number of positive or negative replies

• Whether responses included any selling by staff

The results

Email response time, the good

Over one-fifth (22%) of venues replied within the first hour, and that rose to 60% within the first 24 hours.

That is higher than we had theorised, and a genuinely positive outcome. The majority of venues keep well-maintained inboxes and handle customer requests in a timely manner.

The quickest responses came from emails sent on Wednesday. Plenty of venues are closed on Mondays, and Fridays are busy service days.

Takeaways: speed matters

Timely replies should be an integral part of any business's customer service strategy. Best practice guidance puts the ideal lead response time at 5 minutes. On that standard, the results should look more like 60% within an hour, not 60% within 24 hours.

Email response time, the bad

Overall, a third of the emails we sent had no reply.

For the businesses in question that is a large pile of missed opportunities. The causes vary, but the common ones are familiar. The person in charge has moved on and automatic forwarding was never redirected. Staff shortages mean nobody owns the inbox, or monitoring it is a team task that nobody feels responsible for at the end of the day. And on the technical side, tools that are not interconnected leave emails lost between systems.

Whatever the reason, the impact lands on the customer experience and on lost business.

Takeaways: make sure nothing is missed

Two quick wins for business owners:

Set up notifications for new emails, including web form submissions. The person in charge hears about it straight away, and there is a cover plan for holidays and sick days.

If you want customer communications under control, try a unified inbox. It manages all messages in one place, which makes a difference when enquiries arrive through several sources: website forms, multiple email addresses and reservation platforms.

Automated replies are the other solution, covering staff shortages, closed days and busy periods. Fewer than 5% of venues had automated responses. That surprised us. Autoresponders should be part of any business's operational good practice, especially when staff resources are thin, and they have a big positive impact on customer experience and satisfaction.

The low number probably comes down to unfamiliarity with automation, plus a worry that anything on auto-pilot might spiral out of control.

Takeaways: what autoresponders do for you

Automated responses reflect well on your customer service. Customers feel looked after simply because an enquiry was acknowledged. They also save staff time. Treat the automated email as an FAQ section: common questions and answers, links to your booking system and your policies, anything that helps. Chances are the request is solved before anyone types a word.

Fewer than 15% used any selling skills

Less than 15% deployed any selling skills

Businesses cannot afford a missed booking opportunity, especially with the cover value of a birthday party. People want to treat themselves, order more drinks than normal, and might add a course. There is room for improvement here.

Some replies suggested the venue assumed the sender already had a booking. Assuming is not knowing. The cause is easy to diagnose: the email inbox is not connected to a CRM or booking system. Connected, any member of staff can see previous interactions and the information that helps them serve the customer. Not connected, staff have no context. Have they booked before? Have they visited? None of it is answerable from a single email.

The other explanation is training. Most people's natural reaction is to answer the question in front of them and stop there.

Expert commentary from Ben Floyd, director of [Lumiere Consultancy](https://www.lumiere-consultancy.co.uk/):

"It's hard to really understand the scale of the missed opportunity. But I would say that the vast majority of the operators that I work with feel the strain of dealing with the increased demand of people who want to eat out, with a reduced amount of staff to deal with such demands.

Despite all of the doom and gloom in the news regarding the cost of living crisis, I feel that we have yet to see this translate to hospitality and certainly in some parts of London which is operating within its own bubble.

Selling or upselling is really down to good training, communication and good processes. But also good tech to lighten the load of the restaurant operators.

We have seen the resurgence of QR codes post-covid and certainly booking platforms and ordering tech and payment methods. They are now so intuitive and integrated we can really streamline the customer journey and focus on the human bits that are most important.

Having a good easy to navigate booking system is paramount so that everyone knows the script. I.e. steps of service for the front of house staff and "touching of tables" so that customers are not feeling neglected.

Management needs to nurture and train their staff to really engage with customers. They need to learn the menu so that they are confident to make recommendations and upsell a better bottle of wine or recommend their favourite dessert.

But also tech can play its part. Like a CRM-based software that can remember a previous order from a previous visit, or location-based advertising that can show promotions within the local area to possible diners.

Even down to dealing with complaints. Bad reviews can be mitigated by channelling complaints to the restaurant management before it's in the public domain.

Tech touches all of our lives now and the restaurant industry especially post-covid relies now very heavily on it."

Takeaways: turn the reply into a booking

How do operators stop missing the sale?

First, invest time in proper staff training for these requests. It does not take much to improve a reply; a short sentence will do:

'Do you already have a booking with us? If not, which date did you have in mind and what would your party size be?'

Link them to your online booking platform and ask them to add any special request in the notes.

Second, create a ready-to-use template so staff have the links and the wording already written, needing only final tweaks before sending.

Knowing the customer helps too. A unified inbox linked to your CRM shows the full customer profile, upcoming bookings and past visits, so responses can be personal. For example, a customer who always orders the same drink gets a 'shall we have your usual ready?' instead of a generic yes.

Email response time, the unexpected

80% said yes to the cake, despite tighter-than-ever allergy rules.

The birthday cake has hit the news a few times, not least the great cackeage debate: would you pay a restaurant to bring your own birthday cake?

With allergy regulations tightening, we expected a lower yes rate. It seems most venues have a policy for these enquiries. Where the answer is yes, common conditions are bringing your own cutlery, or signing a form declaring the cake was not produced at the venue. Some even offered to store the cake in their fridge, which is a grey area for food safety rules.

Takeaways: cakes and food safety

We reached out to Samual Turner, Principal Consultant at CaterSafe, for his take on best practice.

How serious is it that so many replies did not cover the food safety element?

"In the grand scheme of things, it is not a significant cause for concern that many did not reference 'food safety' in their initial enquiry response. I would trust that questions would be asked on the day of the event, or as part of a follow-up email when the booking had been confirmed.

However, I would have expected a little more in terms of stating the venue's policy or ascertaining what type of cake was going to be brought in before saying it was fine to do so, to at least cover themselves.

All venues should have a short written policy document and/or disclaimer, with bullet-pointed key safety rules to hand which the customer has to read and agree to before bringing a cake."

Do venues handle this when the customer arrives rather than when they enquire?

"Speaking from experience, it is likely that many do, particularly those who get these requests often.

However, one problem with this is, that having already provided an affirmative response via email, it would be harder to then say 'no' in person when the customer arrives. If there was a greater level of safety risk."

What should venues do when asked about bringing a birthday cake?

"The law requires food businesses to document their arrangements for making sure that the food served to their customers is safe.

Therefore, any food business that allows customers to bring their own food onsite really should have a clear written procedure.

Unfortunately, I have observed on occasions that there can be a disparity between what is 'written down' and what happens in practice.

One workaround would be to specify that only ambient stable, pre-packaged cakes (purchased from a retailer) are permitted and that they must be kept in their original packaging until used."

Would you have expected more respondents to give a food-safety-type response?

"If I am honest, yes. Though, many food businesses will always endeavour to be as accommodating as possible and seek to create the best experience for their guests.

On the other hand, there can also be a tendency to use 'health and safety' as a pretext for prohibiting certain things, or indeed not being willing to be flexible and accommodating."

The research points at several fixes, and one matters most: centralise customer communication. Whichever channel your customers choose, their requests should land in one unified inbox, accessible to every member of staff. Add automated responses covering your common FAQs, and response times stop depending on who is nearest the inbox.

Comment from Patrick Clover, founder of Stampede:

"Our own recent personal experiences inspired this research. We noticed that simple customer email enquiries and web form requests often get missed, impacting the customer experience and leading to missed revenue.

Ongoing staff shortages definitely play a part here but there are other forces at work.

One solution we see to this problem is bringing all incoming customer requests together in one inbox so that operators never miss a message again.

Over the past months, we have built a new feature to help operators stay on top of their customer communications. The Stampede Unified Inbox is now available to all our customers."

Never miss another customer enquiry with the Stampede unified inbox. Book a demo to get started.