Step Aside, Alexa! Numa is Your Restaurant’s Digital Receptionist

These days, everybody’s talking to smart devices to access the info and services they need.

• “Hey, Google, is Main Street Pizza open right now?”
• “Alexa, order more paper plates.”
• “Hey Siri, show me restaurants near me.”

This level of convenient, instantaneous service has become par for the course in modern living.  And the research shows it: 90% of customers rate an "immediate" response as important or very important when they need service from a company.

In practice, however, restaurants can get really busy. Sometimes it might feel like your ringing phone is just background music while a long line of patrons waits to be seated and the hostess is busily coordinating reservations, answering questions, and paging parties. It’s all too common for restaurants to miss some of their phone calls (and revenue).

Just ask Waterman’s Surfside Grill, where they received 150+ calls a day and missed up to 50% of them. As their Marketing Manager, Courtney Brough, told us, “That’s potential business on the other end of the line, but we just can’t get to them all.”

We’ve all been there. Present guests are your top priority, so what can you do to solve the ringing phone? Without a smart, Alexa-like restaurant phone answering service, there’s no way to...oh wait!

Introducing Numa—Your Restaurant’s Digital Receptionist

Waterman’s decided to use Numa as their AI-enhanced phone answering service. With Numa, they could keep their existing phone lines while quickly taking more orders and freeing up the hosts and hostesses to care for in-person patrons.

After a few rings, Numa can answer the phone for you and talk with the customer to give them options and get them whatever they need. Numa will automatically respond to common questions, but it can also handle tasks like taking orders or recording reservation requests.

Here are just a few of the things Numa can do for your restaurant phone system:

• Get working right away. We can get everything set up for you in a matter of minutes, with no new equipment, using your restaurant’s existing phone number and existing phone service.
• Handle incoming calls when you or your hosts/hostesses are unable to answer the phone.
• Give options to the caller, such as texting you or leaving a voicemail. You’ll even have access to a transcript of the call or voicemail. Either way, you can review any messages with the Numa app on a mobile phone, tablet, or computer.
• Answer basic questions about your hours, menu items, reservation policies, etc.
• Capture unanswered phone orders by providing callers with a link to your existing online ordering portal.
• Coordinate contactless pickup through calls or text messages. Customers can tell Numa when they’ve arrived, and Numa can give them instructions or updates while they wait safely in the car.

Numa streamlines all of these tasks so that your employees can be more efficient and have the time they need to focus on the customers in front of them. The best part is that Numa never stops working. It’s a 24/7 restaurant texting and phone answering service. No more business falls through the cracks.

All of this is possible at a low, flat-rate monthly price—we don’t charge per-order fees—which costs far less than hiring additional staff. For Waterman’s, Numa paid for itself many times over with the estimated $100,000 in revenue they recovered by capturing all of those missed calls.

Don’t take our word for it, though. Give Numa a try for free, and let us know what you think!

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