A restaurant that never misses a reservation call

Client profile

La Tavola is a family-run Italian restaurant with a main dining room and a summer terrace, run by the owner, a floor team of eight and a five-person kitchen brigade. Reservations still arrive by phone: regulars, guests booking a birthday table, hotel concierges, and the caller asking whether anything is free in twenty minutes. The line is the restaurant's front door, and during service it was the one door nobody could keep open.

The challenge

During service nobody could answer the phone, so reservation calls rang out and walk-in revenue was capped.

An answering machine just sent callers to the competition.

Between seven and ten in the evening the phone sat on the host stand next to the reservation book, and the person closest to it was also seating guests, running the waitlist and carrying plates. Calls were picked up on the eighth ring or not at all. A guest looking for a table tonight does not call back, they call the next restaurant on their list.

The rush and the calls peaked in the same minutes: Friday and Saturday evening, plus the last hour before the kitchen stopped taking orders. The answering machine collected messages that were played back after close, by which point the Saturday slot the caller wanted had either been given away or stood empty all night.

Group requests suffered most. A birthday for twelve or a corporate dinner needs a date, a head count, a room, high chairs and allergy notes, and voicemail delivered none of that, often not even a callback number.

Why earlier attempts failed

• Answering machine Messages were heard after service ended, by which time the caller had already booked somewhere else.
• Online booking form only It served guests who plan ahead, but regulars and large parties wanted to confirm a terrace table or an allergy note by voice, so they simply called.
• A host with a spare phone The only person free to answer was the same person seating guests during the second turn, so the phone always lost.
• Callback list after close By half past eleven the guest had eaten elsewhere and the evening was already gone.

The solution

EVA, a MyChatBot voice agent, now answers the restaurant line, checks the real table plan while the guest is still talking, and confirms the reservation before the call ends.

1. Put EVA on the line The restaurant number forwards to the MyChatBot Calls SDK, which answers on the first ring in the caller's language, with no queue and no menu of options.
2. Load the floor plan Business Domain docs in the Knowledge Base hold the table map, seating lengths, terrace rules and the kitchen's last order time, and Agentic Search pulls the right line mid-call.
3. Book against the real calendar The Google Calendar integration checks live availability for each seating and writes a confirmed booking with time, head count, room and special requests before the guest hangs up.
4. Log every call in CRM create_crm_lead and add_crm_client_contact record the guest with the source tagged AI-, and lead_chat_link attaches the recording and transcript so the host stand can read the allergy note before service.
5. Route what needs a person Hand-off Control passes large parties, private dining and supplier calls to the owner through a silent hand-off, and Flight Control pings the team in Telegram.
6. Confirm and refill Follow-ups send the confirmation and a day-of reminder, and Lead Processing labels and statuses move a cancelled table back onto the waitlist the same day.

Every reservation call is answered now, even at 8pm on a Saturday, and tables fill 27% better.

What was deployed

Rollout timeline

Results

What comes next

Outbound calls on the same Calls SDK are next: deposit confirmations for large parties and same-day re-offers when a table frees up. WhatsApp is being added alongside the line so the menu, directions and the deposit link land in writing right after the call.