Fireman Hospitality Group is a family-owned collection of diverse concepts all over New York City and National Harbor, Maryland. Founded by Sheldon "Shelly" Fireman, the group has been dedicated to exceptional dining experiences for over five decades. With a philosophy centered on genuine hospitality and long-term guest relationships, Fireman Hospitality Group prioritizes memorable experiences that keep guests returning.
The team at Fireman Hospitality Group faced overwhelming call volumes between its numerous restaurants. Answering every guest call efficiently is part of providing world-class experiences, so they explored a centralized call center to handle inquiries and reservations for thirteen restaurants. However, even with a higher capacity to answer more calls, something was still missing, causing ongoing operational strain.
"With our growth and expansion, there’s only so much you can put on a human,” said Stephanie Holmes, Director of Guest Services at Fireman Hospitality Group. “The pressure of managing thirteen different concepts on one reservationist was a lot.”
Fireman Hospitality Group needed a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solution to handle calls 24 hours a day while maintaining its commitment to exceptional hospitality. More importantly, they needed a way to seamlessly capture reservations and offload some pressure from their call center.
By deploying Slang.ai, Fireman Hospitality Group significantly improved its call-handling process, reducing operational burdens while improving accuracy and efficiency. Over 90 days, Slang’s AI-powered voice concierge managed over 27k inbound calls, of which more than 2.5k occurred simultaneously.
Slang also successfully created more than 2.4k reservations. Roughly 8% of those reservations were captured outside typical business hours and made possible with the official Slang + OpenTable integration.
In addition to directing callers to their preferred ordering platforms to avoid excessive commission fees, Slang provides numerous benefits and cost savings. Fireman Hospitality Group significantly reduced call center costs while maintaining high guest satisfaction.
“[With Slang], we know how much it’s going to cost to have phones answered at a new location, so we’ve cut down our monthly call center budget significantly,” said Stephanie. “[Slang] is more accurate. It won’t misspell your name or create a reservation with the wrong date at the wrong restaurant.”
Slang enabled Fireman Hospitality Group to maintain its high service standards while embracing forward-thinking technology that aligns with evolving guest expectations. As a result, the company achieved an average caller satisfaction score of 96%.
"It’s only a matter of time before every restaurant uses Slang. You can wait and struggle with staffing issues, or you can get ahead of the curve and be one of the first to take advantage of it."
— Stephanie Holmes, Director of Guest Services at Fireman Hospitality Group
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