Willow Run is a small craft distillery and bar in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Nathan Mollohan, the owner, runs the business with a small staff who juggle production, service at the bar, and a steady stream of reservation requests. For a business that depends on walk-ins and bookings, a missed call is a missed customer.
Challenge
The old setup was a voicemail box that almost never got used. Callers would hang up before the beep, and the bar team would find out hours later, if at all.
"We had an answering machine, but it rarely worked well," Nathan says. "People didn't wait long enough to leave a voicemail, so we were missing those calls."
Most of those calls were people trying to book a reservation or ask a quick question about the distillery. Every one that went unanswered was a sales opportunity gone to the next bar down the street.
There was a second problem too. When the team did pick up during service, a simple question could pull a bartender away from customers for several minutes. Hours, menus, booking policies, the same handful of questions, over and over.
Solution
Nathan looked at a few options before settling on Upfirst. What stood out was how easy it was to get running and how easy it was to change later.
"I like the simplicity of Upfirst's portal so I can go in and edit the knowledge base at any time," he says. "Some of the others were more complicated to set up, more complicated to change. This was easy to just turn on and load it with some information."
He loaded the knowledge base with the details callers ask about most often, then let the AI handle incoming calls. The experience feels different from what his callers are used to hearing.
"It's not just like a normal call tree, like press one. You can actually have a conversation. So, I really like that. I know we're not missing anything, any opportunities."
For anything the AI can't resolve, it takes a detailed message and sends a notification to Nathan and the rest of the team.
Results
Willow Run now captures every call that comes in, even when the bar is busy and the phone would have rung out before.
"This has been nice to kind of take the pressure off," Nathan says. "One, we know we're not missing any calls. Less phone calls for our staff when we are open because the AI can either take a message for us or answer the questions and then we don't have to do any follow up."
The notifications run through cleanly. "I think the notifications is nice. It's prompt. I get a text and an email. I think it does a great job of summarizing the calls."
Nathan also pulls the rest of his team into the loop without extra setup. "I like that I can add other people to get the texts and emails."
The biggest change is what the bar staff no longer has to do during service.
"When they're busy, not have to sit and talk on the phone with somebody that has random questions that could have been answered by the AI. So that's helpful, I think, in reducing the calls."
For a small craft distillery with a full bar to run, Upfirst answers the phone so the team can stay with their customers.
