About Carlton Wine Room 

The iconic Carlton Wine Room, located in Melbourne’s trendy inner North, is known for its incredible service, and artfully created wine list. 

Within three months of going live, Sadie handled close to 3,000 calls for Carlton Wine Room; equating to 77 bookings and saving over 40 hours of staff time. 

The Challenge 

For Carlton Wine Room, the challenge that started them down the path to Sadie was simple. Overwhelming phone traffic during busy service times led to things getting missed, and the inevitable human error that comes with handling phone enquiries under pressure.  

Carlton Wine Room owner Andrew Joy says “I could see that staff weren’t able to get to the phones during busy service, and every call missed is business missed. Experience tells me that if you miss that call, there’s a good chance the patron will never try again."

He continues: "Human error is always going to happen under pressure, and it’s difficult to quantify, because you don’t know what you don’t know. You might just run into someone on the street who says ‘I tried to call you six times on Saturday’ and then you’re stuck thinking ‘well, that’s not good.’. 

The Solution 

Going live with Sadie at the precipice of one of the busiest periods of the year, Carlton Wine Room dove in the deep end. Within the first month of use, Sadie had handled over 1,000 phone calls, totaling over 15 hours, and recovering thousands in otherwise lost revenue.  

For staff in venue, the benefits have been immeasurable. Andrew says “there’s a huge difference for staff during service, it allows them to do their job and focus on being customer-facing, rather than worrying about the phones.” 

Reservations and Event Sales Manager Kirsty O’Bryan adds, “for me, it’s taken out all the telemarketing calls, which is huge in my day-to-day and is heavenly, not having to deal with phone calls asking for the business owner.” 

The Journey 

For the team at Carlton Wine Room, the move to a Voice AI solution was a no-brainer. 

Andrew says “This is the reality for the future. AI generated booking services like this will be what all restaurants end up with. The cost of business is rising, so you have to look at where you can introduce efficiencies. If I can spend a couple hundred dollars on Sadie, to recover thousands in revenue and redirect staff efforts, that is a huge saving. So far, we’ve only felt a positive impact; it’s such a simple and easy process that has reduced a lot of waste in our workload.”  

When it came to selecting which solution to use, one of the most important criteria for the Carlton Wine Room team was finding the most “lifelike” solution possible. Kirsty remarks; “we had a look at a couple of solutions, but Sadie was more advanced than the others, she sounds far less robotic”. 

Feedback from customers thus far has reiterated the natural flow of conversation with Sadie. Kirsty says “Mostly, people are surprised with how real Sadie sounds. There is always going to be certain people resistant to technology like this, but they’re the same people who won’t put their details into an online booking system, so there's just no getting around that. The majority of feedback from patrons has been overwhelmingly positive.” 

This positive impact on patrons continues once they are in house, as Andrew observes: “Sadie has reduced the pressure on front of house staff, they’re no longer pulled away during busy service to answer the phone, which keeps their head in the game, and supports better on-floor interaction between staff and guests.” 

For other venues considering implementing Sadie, the message from the Carlton Wine Room is simple. “Just do it” says Andrew, “it is such a simple and easy process, the support we’ve received has been fantastic, and Sadie will save you so much time day-to-day.”