The Challenge

Across their portfolio of venues, the managers at JBS venues had reported a huge volume of incoming calls. A large portion of these calls went unanswered, coming in during busy service times. When calls were answered, managers then had to spend time answering general enquiries around things like opening hours, wifi or parking.  

The result was missed bookings, managers losing time, and customers left feeling frustrated when their calls go unanswered.  

Nita Kisun, Head of Marketing at JBS, led the implementation of Sadie, with the goal to recover revenue from the bookings being lost to missed calls. 

She says “We were losing a lot of calls during busy service periods, more than we even realised, and we knew that missing those calls was costing us bookings. The goal was to get more people in the door, even when we’re being slammed, without having to answer every call ourselves.” 

The Solution

For JBS Hospitality, Sadie has helped recover bookings that would otherwise be lost, and taken a huge amount of pressure off the venue managers.  

Since going live across the JBS portfolio of venues, Sadie handles on average over 1,400 calls per month, with over half handled completely end-to-end. This equates to over 36 hours of calls each month, an entire full-time workweek.  

Managers and floor staff across JBS Hospitality Group have been singing Sadie’s praises. 

Nita expands on this: “The feedback has been all good, the managers love not fielding a lot of unnecessary calls, it reduces stress and lets them focus. For customers, it means someone is always answering their call. She’s a friendly voice who can take their booking or answer general enquiries, even during busy service.” 

The Journey

Driven to meet the needs of their customers, JBS Hospitality Group prioritised functionality when it came to looking at different solutions. Leveraging Opentable to handle bookings, JBS needed a solution that integrated seamlessly with their existing technology.  

Nita says: “We needed the ability to still deliver information to customers on the phones, without taking managers or floor staff away from what they are doing and interrupting service.” 

“You miss a lot of calls, without even realising, and it is really off-putting for customers who have options, and can just go somewhere else. Having someone there to respond to customers makes a difference.” 

After signing with Sadie, it was a matter of weeks before JBS Hospitality Group had Sadie rolled out across all nine venues. Nita emphasises that Sadie’s fantastic, local support made the setup process run seamlessly, enabling them to quickly expand their use of Sadie.  

“The support we received was a huge factor, the team are brilliant and having onshore support makes such a difference. A lot of other solutions are purely US-based, and we have had issues with that kind of thing before.” 

“We had someone from Sadie physically come and sit with us to guide us through the setup. Once we knew how to do one venue, we could easily replicate across the others. Once the basics were in place for all the venues, we went through each venue together to refine and customise each venue’s implementation.”  

Across the JBS Hospitality portfolio, venues are using custom messaging to support promotional efforts, capturing additional revenue.  

Into the Future

JBS Hospitality are already using Sadie to streamline their events management processes. With the new Sadie and Tripleseat integration, they’re making moves to create further efficiencies.  

Nita explains: “Our events team can get up to 50 missed calls just in the morning, which meant they had to spend a huge amount of time listening to voicemails and getting back to people.” 

“We are already using Sadie to answer event calls and direct people to the online form, which is helping to support the events team. With the integration between Sadie and Tripleseat, we’ll now be able to capture details and send them straight to Tripleseat as a new lead, from there, the team can do what they do best.”