Chowly onboards 275–300 new restaurants every single month. At that volume, a broken handoff process doesn't just slow things down — it costs customers.
The Scale Problem
Alex Carstens, Director of RevOps at Chowly, knew that manual lead routing couldn't keep pace with their growth. Getting a new restaurant from inbound interest to live on the platform was taking too long at every stage.
"We're launching 275 to 300 new restaurants every single month... we needed a system that could keep pace with us."
— Alex Carstens, Director of RevOps at Chowly
Full-Cycle Automation
Chowly deployed Chili Piper across the entire revenue cycle — not just the top of funnel:
- Form Concierge — qualified and routed inbound leads instantly, getting prospects to a meeting booking in seconds
- Handoff — moved qualified prospects from sales reps to onboarding managers without manual follow-up
- Distro — automated lead assignment so every new restaurant went to the right rep with full context
The results tracked across each stage:
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Lead-to-opportunity time | 4.5 days | 3 days |
| Form-to-meeting conversion | 65% | 71% |
| Form-to-launch time | 14 days | 6 days |
"Chili Piper is more than a lead routing tool... We're using it full-cycle."
— Alex Carstens
"I love Distro as much as I can love a piece of technology!"
— Alex Carstens
The ultimate sign of trust: once the system was live, Alex could stop thinking about it.
"I can ignore Chili Piper."
— Alex Carstens
We’re launching 275 to 300 new restaurants every single month. These are quick, fast deals, and sowe needed a system that could really keep upand keep pace with us and do it for us. -Alex Carstens, Director of RevOps at Chowly
Overcoming Manual Hurdles with Spicy Automation
Before Chili Piper, Chowly's process of managing inbound leads and onboarding new restaurants was labor-intensive and slow.
Reps were manually chasing prospects down to book a meeting — resulting in a lengthy sales cycle and customer dissatisfaction.
On the new business side, they made two changes that took lead-to-opportunity conversion time from 4.5 days down to 3 days (a 33% increase).
First, they implemented Form Concierge to capture and book meetings with prospects in real-time directly from their website.
Instead of reps manually calling a prospect to get them to book a meeting, the prospects were booking a meeting with reps immediately after filling out the demo form.
Then, they used Handoff to transfer leads to the appropriate sales or onboarding representative. No more back-and-forth scheduling = a much quicker sales cycle.
After an Opportunity is marked Closed Won, what happens?
At Chowly, they use Distro to automatically assign the account to a Customer Success Manager.
As soon as an Opportunity is marked “Closed Won” in Salesforce, Distro routes and assigns the CSM, notifies them via Slack, and adds new account info into their Customer Service Platform Catalyst.io.
“I love Distro as much as I can love a piece of technology!”
As a result of this automation throughout the entire sales cycle, **restaurants are going live on Chowly just 6 days after form submission.**
That’s down from 14 days before using Chili Piper.
Transformative Results: From Lead to Launch
The impact of implementing Chili Piper was clear, and Chowly saw some spicy results, all across the funnel:
-
Lead conversion rates from form fill to booked meeting increased by 10%, going from 65% to 71%.
-
Reduction in the lead-to-opportunity conversion time from 4.5 days to 3 days, resulting in a 33% faster sales cycle.
-
Decrease in the time from form submission to a restaurant going live on Chowly from 14 days to 6 days, resulting in a 57% faster lead-to-launch time.
*“***Chili Piper is more than a lead routing tool.**It’s not just a calendar link. We’re using it post-sales. We’re using it full-cycle. You can do that with Chili Piper.”
Chili Piper: A Full-Cycle Solution
Alex Carstens emphasizes that Chili Piper has become integral to Chowly's entire operational cycle, not just as a lead routing tool or scheduling link but as a comprehensive full-funnel system that supports the entire customer journey from sales, to onboarding, and customer success.
“I know once we stand it up, wherever we're looking to go next, it's just going to do what we need it to do. To me, the best piece of technology you can buy is one that you could ignore, andI can ignore Chili Piper.”
See how Chili Piper can help support any stage of your customer journey and schedule a demo!
