Rookoo x Clays Bar: Turning conversations into bookings 🔫

How Clays Bar turned inbound demand into booking-ready opportunities

Clays Bar is redefining what a night out in London can be. Inspired by the tradition of clay target shooting and brought to life through technology, Clays combines interactive virtual shooting games with a premium bar and food offering in one immersive setting.

It is a venue built around shared experiences rather than just drinks. From dates and birthday celebrations to business bookings and private functions, Clays attracts groups looking for something different. The concept is strong. Demand is real. But like many multi-location operators, the operational challenge begins before guests arrive.

📞 Before: Form, Email and Phone as Primary Intake

Before introducing structured intake automation, Clays received inbound booking requests primarily through a website form, direct email, or phone. Each enquiry required manual review before feasibility could be assessed.

Form submissions often lacked key attributes such as preferred dates, group size, or clarity on whether the booking was a private function or a standard game session. Emails required back-and-forth clarification. Phone calls depended on availability of team members to capture information accurately and consistently.

Progression depended on manual qualification. Availability checks and CRM entry happened only after missing details were collected. Some prospective bookings never advanced beyond the first contact. This was not a demand issue. It was an intake structure issue.

👋 After: Say hi to Peggy

Clays introduced Peggy as an operational intake assistant and expanded their intake sources to include web chat, WhatsApp and Instagram direct messages. These became additional entry points for inbound booking demand, alongside the existing form, email and phone channels.

The objective was not simply to add more contact options. It was to ensure that incoming requests were structured before reaching the team.

Peggy gathered required event attributes, clarified intent, and escalated booking-ready opportunities with context. Instead of unstructured messages arriving in inboxes, the team received summarised requests containing the information necessary for feasibility assessment.

Within the first week, a qualified lead was escalated and successfully converted . The outcome was less important than the process validation. Intake occurred upstream. The team focused on progression rather than clarification.

At scale, the shift became measurable. Over 5,000 conversations were handled across web, WhatsApp and Instagram. Around 300 were escalated with structured context. More than 50 private booking enquiries were handed over to the Sales team.

🔍 Early Insight: Intake as a Diagnostic Layer

As volume increased, another pattern emerged. Not all inbound messages were exploratory questions. Many came from guests who intended to book but encountered friction in the booking flow.

For example: Payment issues, confusion when selecting a timeslot, questions about editing an existing reservation.

Previously, these moments could have resulted in silent abandonment. A failed booking attempt does not always produce a completed form or a recorded call. It often produces nothing.

Because Peggy structured and summarised these inbound messages before escalation, the team gained visibility into recurring friction points. Multiple enquiries referenced the same issue: guests forgot to select a timeslot, which triggered an error.

The operational response was simple. The default timeslot was changed to the first available option. The issue decreased.

Other adjustments followed. Unclear booking steps were clarified. The FAQ was expanded to address recurring pre-booking questions. Small structural changes reduced drop-off risk before payment. Early impact beyond lead generation

Within the first week, Peggy proved her value in a very tangible way. She forwarded a qualified lead that was quickly followed up and successfully converted. It was a simple moment, but an important one.

Not because of the deal alone, but because it showed how well the collaboration worked. Peggy gathered the context, the team closed the conversation. Real teamwork, and exactly what we wanted to achieve.

📊 Operational Impact

The result was not only an increase in qualified private function enquiries. It was improved intake completeness across channels and earlier feasibility assessment.

Booking-ready opportunities were separated from general questions. Support-related messages were escalated with context. Repeated friction points became visible through structured summaries rather than anecdotal feedback.

What could have remained fragmented demand became structured opportunity data. What could have been lost bookings became measurable process improvements.

Clays now operates with consistent intake across email, web chat, WhatsApp and Instagram. Peggy acts as a digital colleague upstream of the team, ensuring that inbound booking requests are qualified before handover and that operational gaps are surfaced early.

👀 Looking Ahead

We are super proud of the collaboration with the Clays team. Working closely with their operational and Sales and Marketing teams has allowed intake automation to be implemented in a way that supports existing workflows rather than replacing them.

Peggy has become a consistent intake layer across locations, helping Clays structure inbound booking demand around the clock. The next phase focuses on deeper availability checks with SevenRooms and further refinement of dispatch and notification systems

Try out Peggy on the website of Clays and see her in action! If you are interested in having a conversation with us, and/ or Clays, let us know!