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47.6% of Deals Started After Hours: What Vast Coworking's AI Rollout Tells Every Franchisor

Writer: Nguyễn Phi Vân
Nguyễn Phi Vân
20 hours ago
4 min read

Nearly half. That is the share of closed deals at Vast Coworking Group locations that began as an inquiry arriving before 9 a.m., after 5 p.m. or on a weekend: 47.6%, according to early results the franchisor released on October 7 alongside a new partnership with AI company Uniti.

Two more numbers sit right next to it. After-hours inquiries already make up 45.8% of all inquiries, and the company says that share keeps rising. And those after-hours leads convert at a rate about 26% higher than leads that arrive during business hours.

Read the three together and the conclusion is uncomfortable for most franchise systems: the best leads are showing up exactly when nobody is at the desk.

What is actually happening

Vast Coworking Group, the franchisor behind Venture X and Office Evolution, is giving its U.S. franchise owners of Venture X, Office Evolution and Intelligent Office immediate access to Uniti's AI agents. The agents run 24/7 across voice, SMS, email and web chat. They answer a new lead's first question, book tours, confirm meeting room reservations and follow up on membership renewals. The platform plugs directly into HubSpot, the CRM the locations already use.

The detail that matters most is not the AI itself. It is the decision to deploy it at the franchisor level, inside the existing system, for every owner at once. Uniti's CEO Francesco Decamilli framed it as AI "deployed as part of the operating model, not simply layered on as another tool." Strip away the press-release language and that is still the right test for any franchise system.

There is a twist. In April, the same group launched Intelligent Assistant as a standalone franchise for virtual receptionist services, presented as a people-powered offer built on live, local receptionists, a service line Intelligent Office had run for more than 30 years. Six months later, AI agents are taking the first reply across the group's coworking brands. The group is not choosing between people and AI. It is deciding which conversations belong to which, and that is the design question every franchisor will soon face.

Why this matters beyond coworking

Coworking is a lead-driven, tour-driven business, so the after-hours effect is easy to see there. But the same pattern can apply to almost any franchise that sells on inquiry: education and tutoring, fitness, home services, senior care, real estate, B2B services. A prospect researching on a Sunday evening is often a serious one. If the first reply arrives Monday at 10 a.m., the franchisee may already have lost the moment, and possibly the lead, to the competitor that answered in seconds.

There are three reasons this belongs on the franchisor's agenda rather than each franchisee's:

  • Consistency. A single owner can buy a chatbot. Only the franchisor can make sure every location answers in the same brand voice, with the same pricing logic and the same booking rules.

  • Data. When agents sit inside one shared CRM, the franchisor finally sees the whole funnel across the network: which hours, which channels, which questions. That is the evidence that should shape the next version of the operations manual.

  • Unit economics. Many single-unit owners cannot staff evenings and weekends. An agent that covers those hours changes the math of a small location without adding payroll. The announcement does not disclose pricing or fees for franchisees, so the cost side still has to be tested system by system.

One caution worth keeping: these are early results reported by the company and its vendor, not an independent study. The direction is credible. The exact percentages may not travel to your brand.

For brands planning to go global

For franchisors expanding across borders, and for master franchisees in Southeast Asia, the after-hours problem gets bigger, not smaller. Time zones, several languages and customers who may prefer to reach out by chat all shrink the share of real demand that falls inside "business hours". An AI front desk that works in the customer's language and channel can be part of the market-entry kit, not an afterthought added two years in.

Five questions to ask this week

  • What share of your inquiries arrive outside business hours, and what share of your closed deals started that way? If you do not know, that is the first gap.

  • How long does a lead wait for its first reply, human or automated, at night and on weekends?

  • Is AI a franchisor-level system decision in your network, or is each franchisee buying a different tool?

  • What may an agent say and decide (prices, availability, refunds, health or legal questions), and where must it hand off to a person?

  • Who owns the conversation data, and do your franchise agreement and privacy policy cover it in every market you operate in?

The takeaway

Franchising has always been about turning one owner's best practice into everyone's standard. Answering the 7 p.m. lead is now a best practice with numbers behind it. The real question is no longer whether to put AI at the front desk. It is whether your system designs it once, for everyone, or leaves every location to figure it out alone.

Sources:

This article is for information only and is not legal, financial or investment advice.

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