We help Mitchells & Butlers pick up 27,000 phone bookings per week

The Challenge

Cost effectively capture missed booking opportunities and integrate with web platform

M&B was aware that their telephone booking system wasn’t as efficient or effective as they wanted it to be. Calls would initially go directly to venues, but answering phones to take bookings was problematic during peak times as staff would be pulled away from serving diners at the venue. Unanswered calls would then bounce through to a central reservations office, which was expensive to run and didn’t offer 24/7 coverage. The system wasn’t ideal for customers trying to book, compromised the experience of in-venue customers, and meant M&B missed out on vital revenue opportunities.

The Solution

liveRES Bookings by Phone powered by iovox

M&B used online booking technology to create an automated phone conversation with each customer looking to make a booking. It captures key information by asking questions such as: “What date would you like to book for? For how many people? What time would you like?”.

Bookings are processed according to realtime availability and information is automatically shared across the booking platform to update all integrated systems. If the desired date and time isn’t available, the system will offer the closest available slots. Confirmation of each booking is sent by SMS.

Through the liveRES partnership, the iovox telephone booking system costs a small flat fee per restaurant per month for round-the-clock coverage – with no commission to pay for each booking received. Set-up costs start from just £100, which means operators love it just as much as customers do.

“Every missed booking didn’t just mean losing income – it also meant our customers were left disappointed. We wanted a system that could capture every booking and offer customers a superior booking experience at any time of the day or night.”
Dave Blackhurst, Operations Director