AI SMS Recovers £52K/Month and 26% of Abandoned Carts for an E-catering Business

Context

An e-catering company operating in the e-commerce catering space faced a common but costly issue: high rates of cart abandonment across its online ordering platform. The business offers time-sensitive, often last-minute catering solutions where purchase intent can fade quickly. Reducing cart abandonment was critical to protecting revenue and maintaining margins, while also preserving customer experience for corporate and private clients who expect quick, reliable service.

Challenges

The primary challenge was identifying when customers abandoned their purchases in real time and re-engaging those customers effectively before they either lost interest entirely or moved to a competitor. Traditional recovery channels, mainly email, were too slow — messages could be unseen for hours or days, by which point customer intent had dissipated. The company needed a reliable method to detect abandonment the moment checkout was interrupted, determine which customers were most likely to return, and create a highly relevant, immediate nudge that would restore purchase momentum without appearing intrusive.

Implementation

The solution leveraged artificial intelligence combined with SMS-based communication to create an immediate and highly personalised abandoned-basket recovery system. The Fractional Head of AI led implementation of an AI monitoring layer integrated directly with the e-catering platform’s checkout process, enabling real-time detection the moment a customer abandoned their basket without completing payment. Rather than relying on traditional email recovery campaigns that customers might not see for hours or days, the company deployed SMS as the primary communication channel, recognising that text messages achieve 98% open rates within three minutes and are checked far more frequently on mobile devices. The AI system was programmed to analyse each abandoned basket’s contents, basket value, and the customer’s order history and behaviour patterns. Using those signals, it automatically generated personalised SMS messages that referenced the specific items the customer had selected, creating a sense of continuity and reducing friction to return. Messages were tailored not only to the product mix and value threshold, but also to customer profile — for example, repeat corporate clients received concise confirmations and a one-click return link, while first-time customers received a friendly reminder highlighting menu items and estimated delivery windows. The integration included automated decision rules to throttle messages and exclude customers who had already completed an order or explicitly opted out, ensuring compliance and a respectful customer experience. A/B testing was used to refine message timing, content variations (item reminder vs. value-focused vs. incentive), and call-to-action phrasing, with the AI learning from outcomes to continuously improve recovery rates.

Results

Within the implementation period, the AI-powered SMS recovery system achieved a 26% recovery rate on previously abandoned baskets. Financially, this translated to fifty-two thousand pounds recovered monthly from the two hundred thousand pounds that had previously been lost to cart abandonment, a dramatic improvement in recovered revenue and ROI for the initiative. Beyond immediate financial impact, the change produced a visible transformation in customer experience: many customers appreciated the helpful, timely reminder and the seamless path back to completing their purchase, which reduced friction in time-sensitive ordering and supported stronger post-purchase satisfaction. The rapid re-engagement prevented potential churn and re-captured orders that otherwise would have gone to competitors, positioning the company to increase long-term loyalty among corporate and private clients. Continuous AI-driven optimization and respectful SMS cadence kept complaint rates low while improving conversion, establishing a scalable model for ongoing reductions in abandonment and predictable uplift in e-commerce catering revenue.