Answer inside 4 rings with the venue name, your name and an offer to help, then capture six fields before the caller hangs up: name, number, date, time, party size and one note. Skai Solutions has set out the script, the handover rules and what 45 minutes on the phone costs you mid service below.
Three parts, in this order, in under four seconds.
So: "Good evening, the Rose and Crown, Sam speaking, how can I help." Nine words. Then stop talking. The most common floor mistake is filling the pause with the specials.
Set a house rule of four rings. Not because four is magic, but because it is countable and enforceable, and a rule nobody can measure is not a rule.
Every booking call needs the same six pieces of information. Take them in this order and a call that gets cut off is still recoverable.
| Order | Field | Why here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Name | Everything else is useless without it. |
| 2 | Mobile number | Take it second, not last. If the call drops after this you can ring back and rescue the booking. |
| 3 | Date | Confirm the day and the date together. "Friday the twelfth" catches the person who means next Friday. |
| 4 | Time | Offer two real options rather than asking what time suits. It fills the shoulders of service. |
| 5 | Party size | Ask for the number including children. The most expensive booking errors are size errors. |
| 6 | One note | Allergy, celebration, pram, wheelchair. One field, not five, or nobody fills it in. |
Close by reading it back once: name, party size, day, date, time. Then say what happens next, which is the part almost everyone skips. "You will get a text confirmation in a few minutes." That single sentence is what makes a caller tell you when plans change.
Two costs, and the second is the one that is never counted.
The first is wages. On the Restaurant Industry Award from 1 July 2026, a Level 2 food and beverage attendant is on A$27.08 an hour and A$40.62 on Sunday. Forty five minutes of phone time across a Sunday service is A$30.47 of Sunday labour. Our award rate table has every level, and the point is that the busiest hours are also the most expensive ones.
The second is the callers who hang up. Brown, Gans, Mandelbaum and others, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2005 censused over 1,200,000 calls and found about 20% of callers abandoned before being served, with mean patience of 446 seconds, roughly 7.4 minutes. The average is not the useful part. The hazard analysis found two distinct spikes: one in the first few seconds as the hold message begins, and a second at about 60 seconds when the message repeats. Both are inside the window a busy floor takes to reach the handset. In hospitality specifically, the Marchex Institute analysis of 5.8 million calls to 13 hotel brands, published July 2018 on 2017 data found a 14% failed call rate, with 5% never answered at all. That is hotels, not restaurants, and it is 2017 data, so use it as an order of magnitude, not as your number.
One, move the handset. Free. Most venues have the phone where the building's cabling put it in 1998, not where staff stand at 6pm. If answering requires crossing the room, the phone will not be answered during service.
Two, write the four questions down. Free. Ninety percent of non booking calls are opening hours, parking, whether you take walk ins, and whether the kitchen can handle a dietary requirement. Put the answers on a card by the phone. New staff stop putting people on hold to go and ask.
Three, split the line. Cheap. Bookings and orders on one number, suppliers and everything else on another that goes to voicemail during service. A restaurant phone system runs about A$20 to A$35 per user a month for the tier that does this, per Need to Know Comms, an independent Australian communications guide, updated 22 August 2026.
Four, take the call off the floor entirely. This is the only fix that works at 7pm on a Friday, because the first three all still require a human who is currently carrying three plates. An AI receptionist answers on the first ring, every ring, at the same cost whether it is one call or forty.
If you have moved the handset, written the card, split the line and the phone is still beating you, the problem is arrival rate, not process. Count the calls for one week in half hour blocks. If more than half arrive in the two hours before service, no amount of floor discipline fixes it, because those are the same two hours your staff cannot be interrupted.
At that point the question is only which off floor option suits. A message taking plan is the cheapest and it returns a written message, not a booking. Skai Solutions answers and completes the booking during the call, which is a different product at a different price. Our page on how a virtual receptionist works explains the divert both options rely on.
Two small things pay for themselves. First, always confirm by text, because the Resos No-Show Index 2026 found that 56% of cancellations arrive within 24 hours of the booking or after it has started, and 7.1% land after the start time. A caller who has your number in their phone cancels rather than vanishes. Second, ask large parties to confirm on the day. In the same dataset, parties of ten or more no showed less often than pairs but cost about three times more per booking when they did. Our page on restaurant no shows has the full figures.
None of this survives a night when you are two people down. For that, see what to do when restaurant staff call in sick.
If you are writing the role down rather than training it, our page on restaurant receptionist duties and responsibilities sets out the full job, what the Restaurant Industry Award pays for it, and a description you can copy. The cheapest way to get a restaurant phone answered prices the alternatives against each other.
Fifteen minutes, your menu, your busiest Friday night.
Book a Free DemoWhen the call still gets away, the recording is the last thing standing between you and a lost order. What a restaurant answering machine message should say has a script you can read straight into the handset.
Venue name, then your own name, then an offer to help, inside four seconds. For example: good evening, the Rose and Crown, Sam speaking, how can I help. Say the venue name first because callers often dial several places, and use an offer rather than a yes or no question.
Set a house rule of four rings. The number matters less than having a countable rule. Brown, Gans, Mandelbaum and others found hang ups spike in the first few seconds of hold and again at about 60 seconds, so the first minute decides whether the call survives.
Six fields in this order: name, mobile number, date, time, party size including children, and one note for allergies or occasions. Take the mobile number second so that a dropped call can still be rescued, then read the booking back once before closing.
Only if it can be done without leaving the floor. If more than half your calls arrive in the two hours before service, floor discipline will not fix it, because those are the hours staff cannot be interrupted. Divert them off the floor instead.
At Restaurant Industry Award rates from 1 July 2026, a Level 2 attendant is A$27.08 an hour and A$40.62 on Sunday. Forty five minutes of phone time in a Sunday service is A$30.47 of Sunday labour, before counting the callers who hang up while nobody reaches the handset.