Klara: the AI receptionist that books café tables at three in the morning

Michaelshof Sammatz is a community running four businesses off one campus, and for years the same repetitive questions, café hours, reservations, event sign-ups, came in by phone to whoever was free to pick up. I built Klara, a chatbot on Voiceflow embedded directly on the website, to take those questions off the phone and answer them, book people into events, and reserve café tables, on its own, at any hour.

The situation

Before Klara, all of that ran through the same handful of people. The community fielded around fifty calls a day for this kind of thing, roughly, and most of them were versions of the same handful of questions: what time does the café open, can I get a table, can I sign up for an event, can I bring my dog. Anything bigger, like a group of fifteen or more, an event or room booking, a school Praktikum inquiry, or an accounting question, was never going to be a quick phone answer anyway. It always needed a specific named person on the team, and it still does.

The build

Klara runs on Voiceflow and sits directly on the Michaelshof Sammatz website as a chat interface, not a phone line. She handles the questions that don’t need a person: opening hours, café reservations, to-go orders, event sign-ups, small booking requests. When something falls outside that, a large group, an event booking, a Praktikum or school inquiry, an accounting question, it still gets routed to the same named person it always did, Claudia, Nadja, or Janet depending on the topic. Klara isn’t trying to replace that handoff, only the calls that never needed it in the first place. I trained the client’s own tech and support team on the system and handed it over. I’m not involved in running it day to day anymore.

The result

Most of the questions that used to mean fifty phone calls a day are now the kind of thing Klara handles directly, on the website, without anyone picking up a phone. The harder requests still land with the same people they always did.

FAQ

What can an AI receptionist actually handle for a small business?

The repetitive, high-volume questions: hours, reservations, availability, simple sign-ups. Anything that needs judgment, like a large group booking or an accounting question, should still go to a person, and a well-built system routes it there rather than trying to answer everything itself.

Does an AI chatbot replace all your reception work?

No, and it shouldn’t try to. Klara handles the questions that don’t need a person and routes everything else, larger bookings, event requests, sensitive inquiries, to a named member of the team, the same way those requests were always handled.

What is Voiceflow used for?

Voiceflow is a platform for building conversational assistants that can be embedded directly on a website. It’s what Klara runs on, answering visitor questions and handling bookings without a phone call.