Setting up a phone assistant in your restaurant

Call forwarding is a feature of your telephone provider, not a piece of software. Your number stays yours, printed on your cards, indexed on Google, known to your regulars. What changes is where the call goes when nobody picks up.

Unconditional forwarding sends every call straight through. Forwarding on no answer waits for a number of rings. Forwarding on busy only comes into play when the line is engaged. Start with forwarding on no answer after five rings: that is the one we recommend, because your team keeps priority and Arthur only takes over when nobody else can.

A code of the kind two stars, the destination number, a hash. You hear a confirmation tone, and it is done. To switch it off, another four-character code. No appointment with an engineer, no hardware to change.

• Your exact opening hours, including the afternoon break and the closing day: that is the basis of every correct reservation.
• Your capacity and your house rules: the largest group you take without confirmation, dogs allowed or not, terrace, pushchairs, means of payment.
• The broad lines of your menu: the signature dishes, the prices, the vegetarian options. Arthur informs, he does not recite.
• What has to be passed on to you: from what group size, and which requests deserve a call back from the team.
• What your callers should hear if you turn the forwarding off: the voicemail on your line takes over again once the deactivation code is dialled.

• The assistant that promises without writing anything down. If the tool takes the reservation but records it nowhere reliable, you have merely moved the problem. Insist on a trace: a text message to the guest, a reservation code, a book you can consult.
• The options factory. Multilingual as an extra, integrations as an extra, text messages as an extra: the advertised price is then not the one you will pay. Ask for the total, all in, and prefer an offer where only the volume changes.
• The long commitment. The only real test is your own guests on the line, and it does not take years. A supplier confident in its product does not lock you in: look at the minimum term and the notice period before you sign.
• Data kept far away. Your guests, their numbers, their habits: this data has to stay hosted in Switzerland, in line with the LPD.
• Forgetting to listen. Over the first few weeks, read back a few call summaries: that is where you fine-tune a house rule or an opening time entered wrong.

With forwarding on no answer, if our service does not pick up, your telephone provider rings your original line: that is the default behaviour of the network, not a promise on our part. We don't promise automatic failover: that mechanism does not exist yet, and we'd rather tell you. In the meantime you stay in control: a code dialled from your phone switches the forwarding off and your line rings at your place again, within seconds. That code is in your dashboard.