One out of three customers don’t get a reply to their query: report

Only 22% replied within the hour.

One out of three customers aren’t receiving any replies from their query by hospitality operators, according to The Hospitality Industry Is Leaving Money In Their Inbox report by Stampede

The report was conducted to quantify if staff shortages and a move to digital enquiries are impacting customer enquiry response rates in the hospitality industry. 

Stampede conducted an experiment where it anonymously reached out to a sample of 250 hospitality venues across the UK and Ireland, asking if it is possible to bring a birthday cake to the venue. The data was analysed based on two hypotheses. First, the majority of operators will take more than 24 hours to reply and second, the majority of the replies should include an offer to make a reservation or link to the table reservation system.

The research discovered that one-third of customer requests did not get a reply. Less than 5% of venues had an automated email response and less than 15% sent any reservation offers or links. Meanwhile, 22% of venues replied within the first hour. 

80% of venues said yes to bringing the cake, which was another unexpected outcome. Recently, allergy laws became notably stricter in the hospitality industry, so a lower positive response rate was anticipated. Looking at the individual responses, the majority of operators have a policy in place, including a declaration form that the product has not been produced on-site. 

“This research was inspired by a request from a customer to make it easier to deal with digital enquiries because the industry is short of staff. We wanted to see for ourselves how this impacted the customer experience and sadly noticed that simple customer email enquiries often got no reply, leading to missed revenue. This survey in conjunction with our customer feedback inspired the latest tool to launch in our suite of hospitality tools, making it easier for venues to engage with the customers, bring more customers back and therefore make more money,” , said Stampede founder and CEO Patrick Clover.