Customer story

How Edgbaston Stadium cleared the distractions from its pipeline

A stadium taking around 29,000 event enquiries a year, worth roughly $33M in pipeline, and a large share of them never going to convert. hivr.ai scores every one on arrival, so the team works only the ones that will.

Angela Sanders

Head of Conference & Event Sales

About

Edgbaston Stadium is a major UK cricket ground and events venue, selling conference, exhibition and event space around its county cricket calendar.

Segment

Stadium and events venue

Region live

United Kingdom

Portfolio

Single venue, exhibition hall and event spaces

Systems

iVvy sales & catering

Deployment

Through iVvy AI, powered by hivr.ai

Products

Lead Qualification Quote Automation Data Sync

The challenge

A pipeline full of wild cards

Around 29,000 enquiries arrive at Edgbaston every year, worth roughly $33M. A large share of them were never going to convert: a planner who has said they want a city centre location next to a train station has already ruled out a cricket ground, but the enquiry still lands, still gets read, still gets qualified and still gets a quote. Conversion sat under 20%, and the sales coordinators were scoring a large part of the pipeline at 10% likely to confirm.

The solution

Scored on arrival, sorted by fit

hivr.ai reads and scores every enquiry as it arrives, against rules Edgbaston sets. The ones that do not fit are declined automatically. The middle tier gets a quote built for it with a person taking the last look, and the complex, high-value events go straight to a senior member of the team. Customer details are written into the system on the way through, taking about four minutes of typing out of every enquiry – 29,000 times a year.

The results

Not another AI pilot. Business value, delivered.

29,000

ENQUIRIES A YEAR

Every one scored on arrival. Sorted by fit before the team sees them.

$33M

ENQUIRY PIPELINE

The value arriving every year. Now handled by fit and priority, not by chance.

4 min

SAVED PER ENQUIRY

And that is the small saving. Nobody works the enquiries that won't ever convert.

“When I saw how much we were dealing with that was less than 50% likely to confirm, that was when I put the initial call in: can you help us with this chunk of our enquiries?”

Angela Sanders

Head of Conference & Event Sales, Edgbaston Stadium

Distraction was the word for it

Edgbaston had already taken two chunks of work off the team. Christmas went first: an exhibition hall holding up to forty separate parties, forty sets of deposits and final details, and a run of phone calls about cranberry sauce, all landing in December and keeping the team stuck in December. Bookers now book, pay and confirm their details online, down to where they want to sit.

Internal bookings went next, and none of those produced revenue at all. Small, short-lead enquiries already went to self-service through Instant Book. What was left was the enquiries that looked real, took real work to qualify and mostly were not going to convert. Angela Sanders had a name for the pattern: distractions.

The worry was people, not technology

The concern when AI was first put on the table was not speed and it was not cost. It was who tells a booker no. Not every enquiry comes from someone inside the industry: some come from other sectors, and some from club members booking a birthday party, who might reasonably mind that no human thought them worth a reply.

The answer was that Edgbaston sets the parameters. A member database can be loaded so the system routes long-standing members straight to a person, and every AI interaction is labelled as Edgbaston's virtual assistant rather than passed off as human. The agents take the volume, the team keeps the relationships that need them.

Every enquiry, sorted.
Only the ones worth your time reach the team.

Your rules decide what is declined, what is quoted, and what reaches a person.

Book a demo