How Bottle Helps Wine Shops Deepen Customer Relationships and Capture More Orders

For consumers, picking the right bottle of wine is a tough task. There’s so much to learn about wine, and a lot of that information is inaccessible to the average person when they’re buying something to drink with dinner.

That’s why getting help from a salesperson is more crucial than at other places we shop. You know how it goes: the customer relays what they’re having for dinner or gives an idea of something they’re looking for, then you hit them with intel on a few producers plus tasting notes on several bottles. This leads them to a decision and maybe even a purchase of two bottles instead of the intended one—or a promise to come back for more soon.

Now imagine what that connection between customer and purveyor could look like if it had room to grow outside of your shop.

Bottle was built to help local businesses deepen their relationships with customers. One of our goals at Bottle is to help you turn stronger customer relationships into recurring revenue, while at the same time automating your workflow to save you time. A wine business can use Bottle in a number of compelling ways:

1. Send digital invoices. Text customers about your weekly curated wine box or deliver an automated nudge about repurchasing their favorite bottle of red. They can buy right then and there—for pick up or delivery—via a one-click ordering link.
   
2. As a chat concierge. Provide your customers with recommendations over text. Maybe they already left the shop and want to know if they should decant the bottle they bought before dinner. Or perhaps they drank something at a restaurant or a friend’s house and want to know if you stock it. Your entire team will be able to man the app to reply to customer messages and automated answers to common questions keep conversations streamlined.
   
3. Keep them in the know. Let your regulars in on an upcoming tasting, when you got a new shipment of something special, or you’re featuring a deal. Whether they want to take action immediately or stop by later, you meet them where they are (their phones) instead of waiting for them to stop by.
   

The real-time access and casual conversation afforded by text message communication positions wine shops to become more than a place to stop in for a bottle. They become locals’ go-to source for all things wine, a fully-fledged neighborhood fixture.

Here’s a high-level overview of what Bottle can do:

• Two-way SMS –> Send and receive texts from your customers, inclusive of automatic nudges to increase reorders
• Pre-ordering –> Let your regulars place orders in advance
• Subscriptions and one-time orders –> Offer customers the option to order à la carte or sign up for a recurring subscription
• Auto deadlines –> Enable cut off times so that orders only occur within a specific timeframe
• Fulfillment reminders –> So customers know when it’s time to order, where to pick up, or when to expect delivery
• Menu management –> Weekly planning made simple
• Order reports –> Receive regular summaries of your total sales, by item and for each order
• Packing PDFs –> One-pagers to include with deliveries or ensure complete orders beforehand
• Interactive dashboard –> Where you can easily view and modify orders
• Loyalty –> Send referral and discount codes directly from the app