Group and Corporate Inquiry Handling

A group inquiry arrives through the same door as a table for two. Someone fills in the general contact form, calls the main line, or sends a message asking whether you can take forty people in March. The front desk or host who picks it up is capable, polite, and completely unable to answer, because the answer involves function space, a room block, minimum spend, AV, and a rate nobody has been asked about yet. So the inquiry gets a holding reply, a promise that somebody will be in touch, and a place in a shared inbox where it joins everything else.

Money leaks at two points. The first is lead time. A corporate planner shortlists three venues and books the one that comes back with numbers first, because their deadline is tighter than yours. If your first substantive reply lands the next afternoon, you were never really in the running. The second is brief completeness. When an inquiry arrives with no dates, no headcount and no budget band, the first reply is a list of questions, which costs another round trip before anyone can price anything. Two round trips on a group inquiry is usually two days, and two days is usually the deal.

The third leak is quieter and larger. Inquiries that do not convert disappear. Nobody records why they were lost, so there is no way to tell a price problem from an availability problem. And nobody records that the inquiry existed at all, which means the annual sales kickoff, the holiday party and the awards dinner - the highest-margin, most predictable business in the building - are re-won from scratch every year by whoever happens to remember. A group inquiry is a sales lead with a date attached. Treated as an inbox message, it behaves like one.

Pipeline and stages

One pipeline, Group and Corporate Inquiries, with stages that match how a planner actually moves:

• New Inquiry - arrived, not yet read by a human.
• Brief Incomplete - acknowledged, waiting on dates, headcount or budget band.
• Qualifying - brief complete, sales manager assigned, checking availability.
• Site Visit Scheduled - walkthrough or virtual tour on the calendar.
• Proposal Sent - numbers out, clock running.
• Negotiating - planner has come back with changes.
• Contract Out - agreement sent for signature.
• Deposit Pending - signed, money not in.
• Confirmed - deposit received, handed to operations.
• Post-Event Follow-Up - event delivered, debrief and rebook.
• Lost - with a required loss reason.

A second, slower pipeline, Annual Repeat Watchlist, holds confirmed and lost inquiries carrying a recurring date, with stages Dormant, Anniversary Window Open, Re-Engaged and Rebooked.

Calendars

• Site Visits - round-robin across sales managers, 45-minute slots, 30-minute buffer either side, restricted to hours when function space is genuinely viewable.
• Discovery Calls - 20-minute slots, same round-robin, wider availability, used when the planner wants to talk before visiting.
• Virtual Tours - 30-minute slots with a video link, for out-of-town and international planners.
• Pre-Event Planning Call - 45 minutes, booked once the inquiry reaches Confirmed, assigned to the events coordinator rather than the sales manager.

Custom fields

Named exactly as below so the automations and proposal merge fields line up:

• inquiry_type - corporate meeting, conference, incentive, wedding, social, buyout, sports group, tour series.
• event_date_primary and event_date_alternate.
• date_flexibility - firm, plus or minus one week, month only, fully flexible.
• guest_count, room_nights_required, peak_night_rooms.
• function_space_required, catering_style, av_required, exclusive_use.
• budget_band - a set of named bands, never a figure typed in free text.
• decision_date - when the planner has to commit.
• company_name, planner_role, agency_or_direct.
• rfp_source - website, phone, email, referral, venue-finding agency, repeat client.
• assigned_sales_manager, first_response_at, proposal_sent_at, proposal_expiry_at.
• contract_sent_at, contract_signed_at, deposit_status.
• loss_reason - price, availability, location, no response, canceled event, lost to internal option.
• repeat_annual and last_event_date for the watchlist.

Tags

• Routing: group-inquiry, corporate, social-event, wedding, conference, buyout, agency-sourced.
• Value and urgency: high-value, short-lead, date-firm, date-flexible, peak-season, needs-gm-approval.
• State: brief-incomplete, awaiting-availability, proposal-live, proposal-expired, contract-out, deposit-overdue.
• Outcome and recycle: lost-price, lost-availability, lost-no-response, repeat-annual, rebooked.
• Compliance: sms-opt-in, sms-opted-out, email-unsubscribed, quiet-hours-hold.

Forms

• Group Inquiry - Full Brief. The primary form. Required: inquiry type, primary date, date flexibility, guest count, budget band, decision date, contact name, company, email, phone. Optional: room nights, catering style, AV, exclusive use, free-text notes, file upload for an RFP document.
• Quick Inquiry Widget. Three fields - date, headcount, email - embedded on the function-space and group pages for planners who will not fill in anything longer. Drops the lead into Brief Incomplete deliberately.
• Site Visit Request. Date preferences, who is attending, whether they need parking, accessibility requirements.
• Proposal Feedback. One question with a short list - still deciding, need changes, going elsewhere, no longer happening - plus a free-text box. Feeds loss_reason.
• Post-Event Debrief. Sent to the planner after delivery, asks what to repeat and whether the event recurs annually. Sets repeat_annual.

BO's role and guardrails

BO covers the gap between arrival and a human being available, and does the chasing nobody enjoys. BO may:

• Acknowledge any inquiry within seconds, by the channel it came in on, naming the specific sales manager who will handle it and by when.
• Ask for the missing brief fields conversationally, one or two at a time rather than as a wall of questions, and write the answers into the custom fields.
• Describe capacity, layouts, room types, AV availability and general seasonality from a reference document maintained by the sales team.
• Offer site visit and discovery call slots from the calendars and book them.
• Chase unanswered proposals and unsigned contracts on the schedules below.

BO must not:

• Quote any rate, minimum spend, per-head figure, discount or fee. BO says the sales manager will put numbers together and offers to book a call instead.
• Confirm that a date is available. Availability comes from a human checking the function calendar and the room block.
• Agree to hold space, waive a charge, or accept a change to contract terms.
• Handle anything tagged buyout, needs-gm-approval or high-value beyond the initial acknowledgement - those escalate to a named person immediately.

Every BO conversation is visible in the contact record, and any message containing the words cancel, complaint, contract, legal or deadline is flagged for human review before BO replies again.

Numbers and channels

• A dedicated group and events number, SMS-enabled, published on the function-space pages and used as the reply-to for all proposal follow-ups, so group traffic never lands in the reservations queue.
• Voice routing on that number: an AI receptionist answers out of hours, captures inquiry type, date, headcount and contact details, writes them to the pipeline, and sends the planner a confirmation text. In hours it rings the duty sales manager first and falls back to the AI receptionist after five rings.
• A monitored group sales email address, connected so threads attach to the contact record rather than living in one person's mailbox.
• Web chat on the function, meetings and weddings pages, answered by BO with the same guardrails.
• Agency and venue-finder inquiries arriving by email are parsed into the pipeline and tagged agency-sourced, since those have their own response deadlines.

One inquiry, from arrival to a signed contract and the following year's rebook.

1. An operations manager at a software company needs a two-day offsite for sixty people in late April with twenty bedrooms on the middle night. She finds the meetings page at 9pm and uses the Quick Inquiry Widget, because she is not filling in a long form at that hour. Three fields: April 23, sixty people, her work email.
2. The lead is created, tagged group-inquiry and brief-incomplete, placed in Brief Incomplete, and assigned to the next sales manager in the round-robin. first_response_at is stamped. Because the request is for more than forty guests it also picks up high-value.
3. Within seconds BO emails her: an acknowledgement that names the sales manager, says numbers will follow, and asks two questions - is the date firm, and roughly what budget band is she working to. No price is mentioned.
4. She replies that the date can move by a few days and picks a band. BO writes date_flexibility and budget_band, then asks the two remaining gaps - catering style and whether she needs AV. She answers. The brief is complete, so the lead moves to Qualifying, brief-incomplete is removed, and the sales manager gets a task with the full brief on one screen.
5. At 8:15 the next morning the sales manager checks the function calendar and the room block. April 23 works. She marks availability confirmed, which triggers BO to offer the planner a site visit: three slots from the Site Visits calendar, or a virtual tour if she would rather not travel.
6. The planner books a Thursday walkthrough. The lead moves to Site Visit Scheduled. She gets a confirmation with parking and arrival instructions, then reminders at 48 hours and two hours before.
7. The visit happens. The sales manager logs notes against the contact and marks the visit attended. The planner mentions the date cannot slip past the end of April and that she needs to decide within two weeks - that goes into decision_date, which the follow-up timings read from.
8. The proposal goes out the same afternoon. Moving the lead to Proposal Sent stamps proposal_sent_at, sets proposal_expiry_at to fourteen days out, and applies proposal-live. The follow-up sequence starts.
9. Nothing happens for three days. BO sends a short text to the mobile she gave, offering to answer anything or get the sales manager on a twenty-minute call. She replies asking whether the AV package can be trimmed and the headcount dropped to fifty-two.
10. That reply contains a change, so BO stops and hands the thread to the sales manager, who moves the lead to Negotiating and reissues the proposal. proposal_expiry_at is pushed out by a week.
11. She accepts. The contract goes out for e-signature, the lead moves to Contract Out, contract_sent_at is stamped, and the chase sequence runs on days two, five and eight until the signature event comes back.
12. Signature received. The lead moves to Deposit Pending, a deposit invoice is sent with the payment link, and a reminder runs every three days until payment clears. Her finance team pays on day four.
13. The lead moves to Confirmed. Operations get a handover summary with every brief field on it, the events coordinator is assigned, and the planner is invited to book a Pre-Event Planning Call. The sales manager is now out of the loop except for the commercials.
14. The offsite runs. Two days later the Post-Event Debrief goes out. She says it went well and that the offsite is annual. repeat_annual is set to yes, last_event_date is stamped, and the contact is added to the Annual Repeat Watchlist in Dormant. Eight months later the anniversary workflow wakes it up and the sales manager calls her before she has started looking.

Eight workflows. Build them in this order, because each one depends on the fields the previous one sets.

1. Inquiry Intake, Classification and Routing

Trigger: submission of Group Inquiry - Full Brief, Quick Inquiry Widget or Site Visit Request; inbound call completed on the group number; inbound email to the group sales address; or new web chat conversation on a function page.

Actions in order:

1. Create or match the contact on email, then phone. Apply group-inquiry.
2. Stamp first_response_at with the current timestamp and rfp_source from the channel.
3. Branch on inquiry_type: corporate, conference and incentive get corporate; wedding gets wedding; buyout and exclusive use get buyout plus needs-gm-approval.
4. Branch on guest_count: at or above your high-value threshold, apply high-value and assign to the senior sales manager directly rather than the round-robin. Below it, assign round-robin.
5. Branch on days between now and event_date_primary: under 21 days applies short-lead and raises the internal notification to a phone call rather than an email.
6. Branch on completeness. If event_date_primary, guest_count and budget_band are all present, create the lead in Qualifying. Otherwise create it in Brief Incomplete and apply brief-incomplete.
7. Send the acknowledgement immediately on the channel the inquiry arrived on. Email version: "Thanks for your inquiry about 23 April - it has gone straight to Maria, who looks after group business here. She will come back to you with availability and a full proposal by 10am tomorrow. In the meantime, two quick things that will speed it up." Then the questions. Note what the copy does not contain: a price, and a promise that the date is free.
8. Notify the assigned manager with the brief summary, the inquiry type, the headcount and the decision date.
9. If needs-gm-approval is present, also notify the GM and stop BO from replying further on the thread.

Exit: runs once per inquiry. A second inquiry from the same contact within 30 days attaches to the existing lead instead of creating a new one.

2. Missing Brief Chase

Trigger: lead enters Brief Incomplete, or sits in it for more than 15 minutes with brief-incomplete applied.

Conditions: stop entirely if sms-opted-out and email-unsubscribed are both present. Skip the SMS steps if sms-opted-out alone.

Actions:

1. BO asks for the two most valuable missing fields in one short message, conversationally. "Two things and Maria can get started: is 23 April firm, or could it move by a few days? And are you thinking day delegate only, or overnight with bedrooms?"
2. Wait 4 hours. If still incomplete and inside business hours, BO asks again, dropping to a single question - the one that unblocks pricing, usually budget band.
3. Wait 20 hours. Send an email with the full form link and the line "If it is easier, this short form covers everything in one go."
4. Wait 2 days. SMS: "Still happy to put something together for 23 April if the plan is live - just reply with a rough headcount and we will do the rest."
5. Wait 4 days. Apply lost-no-response, set loss_reason to no response, move to Lost, and add to the Annual Repeat Watchlist as Dormant so it resurfaces next year rather than vanishing.

Exit: immediately when all three required fields are populated, or the contact replies with a human-escalation keyword, or the lead is moved out of Brief Incomplete by a human.

3. Response-Time Escalation

Trigger: lead created in Qualifying or moved there from Brief Incomplete.

Actions:

1. Wait 60 minutes during business hours, or until 30 minutes after opening if created overnight.
2. Condition: has the assigned manager sent an outbound message or logged a call? If yes, exit.
3. If no, notify the assigned manager directly: "Inquiry for 23 April, 60 pax, decision date 14 April - still unanswered 1 hour in."
4. Wait 2 hours. If still unanswered, notify the director of sales and reassign to the duty manager.
5. Wait 4 hours. If still unanswered, notify the GM and apply an internal tag so the miss shows up in reporting rather than being quietly forgiven.

Exit: any outbound human contact logged against the lead, or the lead moving to Lost.

4. Site Visit Booking and Attendance

Trigger: the assigned manager marks availability confirmed on a lead in Qualifying.

Actions:

1. BO sends the visit offer with three concrete slots and a booking link. "Good news - 23 April is open. Worth seeing the space before you commit. I have Tuesday 2pm, Wednesday 11am or Thursday 4pm, or pick your own here. If travel is awkward, I can set up a 30-minute virtual tour instead."
2. Wait 2 days. If no booking, resend with the virtual tour as the lead option.
3. Wait 3 days. If still no booking, notify the manager to call, and continue to the proposal path anyway - a visit is not a prerequisite.
4. On booking: move to Site Visit Scheduled, send confirmation with address, parking, which entrance and who to ask for. Add to the manager's calendar.
5. Reminder at 48 hours by email, including the agenda and who will be there. Reminder at 2 hours by SMS: "Looking forward to seeing you at 4pm. Park in the rear lot and ask for Maria at reception."
6. 30 minutes after the slot ends, task the manager to mark the visit attended or no-show and log notes.
7. If no-show: BO sends "Sorry we missed you - want to pick another time?" with the booking link, and the lead stays in Site Visit Scheduled for one more attempt before reverting to Qualifying.

Exit: visit marked attended, or lead moves to Proposal Sent or Lost.

5. Proposal Follow-Up

Trigger: lead moves to Proposal Sent.

Setup actions: stamp proposal_sent_at, set proposal_expiry_at to 14 days out or to decision_date minus 2 days if that is sooner, apply proposal-live.

Actions:

1. Wait 1 day. Email from the manager's address: "Sent the proposal for 23 April yesterday - did it land, and does the structure look right? Happy to walk through it on a quick call if that is easier." Include a booking link for a 20-minute discovery slot.
2. Wait 2 days. SMS, only if sms-opt-in: "Hi - just checking the 23 April proposal reached you. Any questions, reply here and I will pick it up."
3. Wait 3 days. Email with one piece of substance rather than another nudge - a floor plan, a sample run of day, or a note on what else is in the calendar that week. "Thought this might help - here is how a sixty-person offsite usually runs in the Garden Room."
4. Wait 3 days. Branch on decision_date. If it is within 5 days, send the deadline-aware version: "I know you are deciding by the 14th. The date is still open but I cannot hold it indefinitely - is there anything I can change to make this work?" If the decision date is further out, send a lighter check-in.
5. At proposal_expiry_at minus 2 days: notify the manager to call personally. This step is a human task, not a message.
6. At proposal_expiry_at: apply proposal-expired, remove proposal-live, send the Proposal Feedback form - one question, takes ten seconds - and move the lead to Lost with loss_reason set from the response, or no response if the form is ignored.

Exit and stop conditions: any inbound reply pauses the sequence and notifies the manager. A reply containing a change request, a price objection or a question about terms hands the thread to a human and does not resume. Moving the lead to Negotiating, Contract Out or Lost exits.

6. Contract and Deposit Chase

Trigger: lead moves to Contract Out.

Actions:

1. Stamp contract_sent_at, apply contract-out.
2. Wait 2 days. Email: "The agreement for 23 April is with you for signature - shout if anything in it needs discussing before you sign."
3. Wait 3 days. SMS to the signatory: "Quick one - the 23 April agreement is still waiting on a signature. Anything holding it up?"
4. Wait 3 days. Notify the manager to call, and copy in the planner's named deputy if one was captured.
5. On the signature-completed event from the e-sign tool: stamp contract_signed_at, move to Deposit Pending, remove contract-out.
6. Send the deposit invoice with a payment link, and the terms stated plainly without a figure in the message body itself.
7. Wait 3 days. If unpaid, reminder email. Wait a further 3 days, apply deposit-overdue and notify both the manager and finance. Repeat the 3-day reminder up to three times, then escalate to a human call and stop automated chasing.
8. On payment: set deposit_status to received, move to Confirmed, and fire workflow 7.

Exit: deposit received, or the lead is moved to Lost by a human.

7. Confirmed Handover to Operations

Trigger: lead enters Confirmed.

Actions:

1. Assemble a handover summary from the custom fields - date, headcount, room nights, catering style, AV, exclusive use, accessibility notes, planner contact - and send it to the events coordinator and the kitchen and AV leads.
2. Create tasks: function sheet drafted at 14 days out, final headcount confirmed at 7 days out, rooming list at 7 days out, billing instruction at 3 days out.
3. Reassign the contact owner from the sales manager to the events coordinator, keeping the sales manager as a watcher.
4. Email the planner: "You are confirmed for 23 April. From here Priya will look after the detail. Grab 45 minutes with her whenever suits to run through timings, menus and AV." Include the Pre-Event Planning Call booking link.
5. Wait until 3 days before the event. SMS the planner the day-of logistics - arrival time, loading access, the on-site contact's mobile.
6. Wait until the day after the event. Move the lead to Post-Event Follow-Up and fire workflow 8.

Exit: event delivered, or cancellation, which routes to a separate human-handled cancellation task.

8. Post-Event Debrief and Annual Anniversary Recycle

Trigger part one: lead enters Post-Event Follow-Up.

Actions:

1. Wait 2 days. Email the planner the Post-Event Debrief form. "Hope the offsite landed well. Two questions when you get a moment - what should we repeat, and is this one of those that comes round every year?"
2. If the response sets repeat_annual to yes: stamp last_event_date, apply repeat-annual, and add the contact to the Annual Repeat Watchlist in Dormant.
3. If the response is negative or critical, do not send anything automated. Notify the GM and the events coordinator and stop.
4. Wait 5 days. If the debrief is unanswered, one SMS nudge, then stop.

Trigger part two: a daily scheduled check across the Annual Repeat Watchlist, comparing today against last_event_date.

Actions:

1. At last_event_date plus 300 days: move to Anniversary Window Open, notify the sales manager with last year's full brief attached, and create a task to call within 48 hours. A human call beats an email here and the workflow should say so.
2. Wait 7 days. If no human contact logged, BO sends a warm email referencing the specific event: "This time last year you were in the Garden Room with sixty people. If the offsite is happening again, I can get the same dates pencilled before the calendar fills."
3. Wait 14 days. Second email with the same-week dates for the coming year and a discovery call link.
4. On any reply or booking: move to Re-Engaged, then create a fresh lead in Qualifying on the main pipeline with last year's brief pre-filled, and move the watchlist record to Rebooked.
5. At last_event_date plus 400 days with no engagement, return the record to Dormant and try again next cycle rather than deleting it.

Exit and stop conditions: email-unsubscribed or sms-opted-out suppresses the relevant channel across both parts. A reply from the planner at any point pauses everything and notifies the owner. Records where loss_reason is canceled event are excluded from the anniversary cycle entirely.

The change an operator notices first is that nobody is deciding what to do with a group inquiry any more. It arrives, it gets acknowledged inside a minute with a named owner, the missing half of the brief gets collected without a human writing a single question, and the sales manager opens a lead that is already answerable. The work shifts from chasing information to pricing and selling.

The second change is that the pipeline stops being a memory aid and starts being a forecast. Every live inquiry has a date, a headcount, a budget band and a decision date, which means you can see what is contestable this month rather than guessing. The third change is that losing stops being silent. Every lost inquiry carries a reason, so the question at the end of a quarter is no longer whether group business was soft but specifically how much went to availability you could have moved, price you could have matched, and silence you could have broken.

Metrics to watch

• First response time, measured from inquiry creation to the first outbound message, split by channel and by in-hours versus out-of-hours. This is the number the build is really about.
• Time to complete brief - creation to the moment the lead leaves Brief Incomplete. Watch how many inquiries never complete, and which single field stalls most often.
• Proposal turnaround - availability confirmed to proposal_sent_at.
• Site visit booking rate and attendance rate, and the conversion difference between inquiries that visited and those that did not. This usually justifies pushing visits harder.
• Proposal-to-contract rate and contract-to-deposit lag in days.
• Loss reason mix over a rolling quarter, and specifically the share tagged lost-no-response, which is the share the follow-up sequences should be eating into.
• Repeat annual rebook rate - of contacts with repeat_annual set, the proportion that reach Rebooked before their anniversary window closes.
• Inquiry mix by rfp_source, so you can see whether agency-sourced business is growing at the expense of direct.

Decisions to make before building

• Who owns a group inquiry, and what the round-robin looks like out of hours and at weekends. The build cannot invent an owner.
• The response-time commitment you are willing to publish, and who gets escalated to when it is missed.
• The budget_band options, the inquiry_type list and the loss_reason list. Agree these once; changing them later orphans historical reporting.
• The threshold at which an inquiry needs GM or revenue-manager approval before a proposal goes out.
• What BO is allowed to say about capacity and layouts. Write that reference document before go-live rather than during.

Integrations and provisioning

• Calendar connection for every sales manager and the events coordinator - Google Calendar or Outlook - so site visits do not collide with their real calendars.
• Stripe or your existing payment provider for deposit links, and QuickBooks or Xero if deposit invoices need to reconcile against your ledger.
• An e-signature tool for contracts, with the completion event wired back so contract_signed_at is stamped without anyone retyping it.
• Your PMS, CRS or function calendar. Full two-way integration is rare at this tier; a daily export plus a human availability check is normal and the build assumes it.
• Video conferencing for virtual tours.
• A dedicated group and events phone number, SMS-enabled, provisioned and verified before any SMS step is switched on. Keep it separate from the reservations line.

Compliance

• A2P and 10DLC registration. If you are sending SMS in the United States, the brand and campaign must be registered before launch. Register the campaign as the mix it actually is - transactional confirmations and reminders alongside sales follow-up - and expect sample message copy and an opt-in description to be required. Unregistered traffic is filtered rather than refused, which fails quietly and is worse.
• Opt-in and opt-out. Treat a planner giving you a cell number on an inquiry form as consent for inquiry-related messages only, with the form wording saying so. STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE and CANCEL must set sms-opted-out and suppress every SMS step immediately, including reminders. Keep the opt-out audit trail on the contact record.
• Quiet hours. Hold non-urgent SMS between 9pm and 8am in the recipient's local time, not yours, which matters when planners are in other time zones. Site visit and event-day reminders are the only sensible exception, and only where the timing is the point.
• Separate marketing consent. Seasonal and promotional sends need their own opt-in, kept distinct from inquiry correspondence. Do not quietly move group inquiry contacts onto the marketing list.
• Data protection. Group briefs often contain attendee numbers, dietary and accessibility information and sometimes named delegate lists. Decide what you keep, where it lives, how long you retain it after the event, and who can see it. Under GDPR, UK GDPR or similar regimes you will also need a lawful basis, a retention period and a route for access and deletion requests, and a data processing agreement with each vendor in the chain.
• None of the above is legal advice. Confirm the specifics - consent wording, retention periods, registration obligations and any sector rules that apply to you - with the client's own counsel before launch.

Scoping, number provisioning and integration work vary by property. To get a build scoped for your venue, book a call at bookings.appbo.io.