Party Planner Gives Studio Owners the Tools They Need to Increase Private Party Bookings
Hosting a party at home isn’t as glamorous as it sounds—from cleanup to cooking to keeping guests happy, entertaining can be downright exhausting. That’s why so many people look to outsource parties to fun venues, like Pinot’s Palette. In fact, birthday parties and corporate events form about a third of the paint and sip franchise’s total revenue.
Because Pinot’s Palette private parties are so popular, the company developed a tool called Party Planner to help franchisees manage parties. Party Planner eliminated many common private party planning hurdles, improving three key areas:
- Introduced website confirmation of booked parties, making it easier to reserve a party time.
- Streamlined back office process for managing party leads.
- Improved communications tools including electronic invitations and RSVPs.
The custom-built customer resource management system tracks private party leads, which allows studio owners to respond to customer questions and track what step a customer is at with the party planning process. It also reminds owners when to follow up with party leads.
“Our Party Planner dashboard keeps all studios organized with who to call back and when,” Pinot’s Palette Franchise Relations Manager Bryan Sanchez says. “The dashboard automatically organizes questions by date and time of submission, which helps studio owners determine which leads require the quickest response.”
Gives Customers Party Planning Power
For customers, the system creates a more streamlined experience, allowing them to invite guests via email and keep track of RSVPs. And before the customer even books a party, they can look to the Pinot’s Palette party page to get detailed information on the types of parties that a studio hosts. Every page includes a link to submit a question directly to the studio or to begin party planning.
Sanchez gets excited talking about the technical details of Party Planner, but he says the tool’s advantages boil down to this: “We’ve really given a lot of control to the organizer and made the process much more transparent, removing the studio owner as the middle-person in the planning process.”
But Pinot’s Palette realized that taking this party coordination responsibility off the shoulders of studio owners would require building a level of trust in Party Planner’s capability. “Headquarters has worked tirelessly to provide white-glove training and personal response to every franchisee who required additional assistance of any kind,” Sanchez says. “Generally, the overall feedback is very positive.”
Pinot’s Palette knows that every lead is important to a small business owner and is glad that Party Planner is preventing leads from slipping through the cracks. The CRM has increased private parties (and therefore, revenue) systemwide, and all franchisees can toast to that.