AI receptionist for restaurants
The phone rings hardest at the moment nobody can reach it.
A restaurant's busiest hour and its busiest phone are the same hour. Belline answers through service, takes the booking request, and hands events and complaints to a person.
Answers in English.
By city
Where we have written it up.
Each page is about a restaurant's phone in that city — the week it keeps, the languages on the line and the calls it loses.
Dubai
Since January 2022 the federal public sector has worked Monday to Friday, with the weekend on Saturday and Sunday and a shortened Friday, and most of Dubai's private sector followed it.
Abu Dhabi
Monday to Friday, weekend on Saturday and Sunday, with a short Friday across the public sector.
Sharjah
Sharjah is the outlier.
Why the calls go missing
Nobody is ignoring the phone.
Restaurants lose calls for reasons that have nothing to do with caring about them.
The rush and the ringing are the same hour
Between seven and nine the floor is full, the pass is calling and the handset is behind the bar. The calls that go unanswered in those two hours are the ones asking for a table in those two hours.
Most of it is not a booking at all
Are you open tonight, do you do gluten-free, is there parking, can we bring a cake. Each one is thirty seconds of a host's attention taken from a queue of people standing in front of them.
A guess about an allergen is not an answer
Somebody will ask what is in the sauce. A member of staff who is not sure and says yes anyway is the reason that question has to reach the kitchen, not the phone.
The voicemail nobody plays back
A table for four on Saturday left on an answering machine at nine on Friday is a table for four somewhere else by ten. A message is only worth taking if somebody reads it in time.
Where it stops
Knowing what not to say is the hard part.
Belline will not invent a dish, an allergen answer, a policy or a table. Large parties, private dining, events and complaints are taken as a message for a person to ring back.
How it works
Set up from what you already have.
Most of the work is checking what Belline found. You decide when customers reach it.
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Give Belline what you already have
Your website, price list or brochure. It reads them and drafts your services, prices, hours and the questions a restaurant gets asked every day.
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Check what it found
Fix anything wrong, fill the gaps, and set the rules it must hold. Nothing goes live until you have read it.
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Switch it on
Ring it yourself first. Then forward your line and paste one line of HTML into your website. Customers only reach Belline once you do.
Questions
What operators ask us.
Will it hold a table, or just take the request?
Belline asks for the date, the time, the party size and the name. With your reservations in a connected calendar, Belline checks it and books the table straight in. Without one, it takes the table request and your team confirms the table.
What does it do about allergies?
It answers only from the allergen notes you give it, in the words you wrote them. Anything it has not been told is taken as a message for the kitchen with the caller's number, rather than answered. A guess about nuts is not an answer.
What happens with a party of twenty?
You set the size at which a party stops being an ordinary booking. Past it, Belline stops taking details, takes a name, a number, a date and a headcount, and flags it for whoever runs events so a person calls back.
Can we still pick up ourselves?
Yes, and most restaurants do. Forwarding is usually set so Belline only answers when nobody picks up or the line is busy, which means your host still gets first refusal on every call.
Does it work during service, when the room is loud?
Belline is answering the line, not standing in the room, so the noise on your floor does not reach it. What it hears is the caller's end of the line, the same as a host would.
Can it read the menu off our website?
Give it your website, menu or brochure at setup and it drafts your hours, dishes and common questions from them. You check that draft before anything goes live, and you fix what it got wrong.
What happens to a complaint about last night's dinner?
It goes to a person. Belline takes the caller's number and exactly what they said, marks it, and says a manager will ring them back. It will not apologise on your behalf or offer anything.
Does it book into our reservation system?
Not yet. Belline answers the caller, takes their details and their request, and your team enters it in the system you already use. Booking straight into a reservation platform needs a partner agreement with each company. Tell us which one you use.
