Momento Hospitality runs eight venues across Sydney. Like most restaurant groups, its phones were busiest at exactly the wrong times: during service, when staff were looking after guests, and after close, when nobody was there to pick up.
The result was a steady stream of missed calls. After a busy night, venues could find dozens of unanswered calls from people who wanted to book but never left a message. Each one was a table that probably went to a competitor. The calls that were answered pulled staff away from guests in the room, and the cost of reception and floor staff kept climbing.
Momento needed every call answered, at any hour, without adding headcount or taking staff away from service.
AI Consulting Group, now part of Avocado, built the entire Axi platform end to end for Sydney startup Axify. Axi is a conversational voice AI agent designed for hospitality, health and beauty businesses, and Momento deployed it across all eight of its venues.
Callers ring the venue’s usual number, and calls are forwarded to the agent. There’s no app or new number for customers to learn.
The agent handles the call the way an experienced host would. It understands natural speech from any caller, in any environment, and manages back-and-forth requests such as changing party size, choosing between times or asking about dietary options. It speaks in a tone that matches each venue. Because it connects to Momento’s booking system, it confirms reservations on the call rather than taking a message for someone to return later. Anything that needs a person, such as a complaint or a large event enquiry, is passed to staff.
Setup was light. Phone forwarding and a booking system integration were all it took, with no change to how the venues run.
Within the first month, the agent was handling three in every four calls. Calls that had averaged around five and a half minutes with staff were resolved in about one minute, because the agent goes straight to the booking with no hold time or call-backs.
That freed 297 staff hours a month, which went back into looking after guests, and saved US$28,000 a month in staff costs.
The bigger impact was revenue. Calls that would previously have rung out became confirmed bookings, and the agent generated US$236,059 in bookings in one month. For Momento, the phone line moved from a cost to manage to a channel that brings in revenue around the clock.
Hospitality, health and beauty businesses all face the same problem: demand arrives by phone when staff are busiest or off shift. A voice agent answers every call, keeps the experience consistent across every venue, and scales from a single site to a multi-venue group without extra staff.