About the business
- Business
- Hector’s Fish and Chips
- Location
- Shop 1, 2185 Point Nepean Rd
Rye VIC 3941 - AI receptionist
- Domenico
- Vietnamese-Australian persona
- BackOnTools plan
- Custom (Hospitality)
The challenge
Hector’s Fish and Chips sits on the Mornington Peninsula, one of Victoria’s most popular summer destinations. When the weather turns warm and the footy season hits, the shop becomes one of the busiest in the region. The team serves hundreds of customers a day — and the phone rings constantly.
The problem was simple: when you’re deep-frying, serving customers, and managing a hot kitchen at capacity, nobody can leave to answer the phone. Calls went unanswered. Customers rang to ask about hours, check if they were open on public holidays, or enquire about catering for a party — and hit a voicemail they never came back to.
The owner didn’t need a booking system. He needed something that could answer every call, handle the three things customers actually ring about (hours, specials, catering), and do it in a way that felt like Hector’s — warm, casual, and a bit cheeky. A generic US call centre voice wasn’t going to cut it.
The solution
BackOnTools configured a custom AI receptionist named Domenico — a Vietnamese-Australian persona that fits the Hector’s character perfectly. Domenico answers every call in Hector’s voice: warm, conversational, a touch of personality. Callers don’t feel like they’ve reached a corporate answering service.
The AI was trained on everything a Hector’s customer actually asks:
- Opening hours and holiday trading (including public holiday variations)
- The full menu — fish types, portion sizes, pricing, specials
- Catering enquiries — how to order for a group, lead times, what’s available
- Location details and parking
- Whether the kitchen is still open near closing time
Domenico runs 24/7 on a dedicated AU mobile number. The phone rings, Domenico picks up, answers the question, and the kitchen team never needs to leave the fryer. If something genuinely requires a human — a complex catering quote, a complaint — Domenico takes the caller’s details and promises a callback.
The results
“People ring to ask if we’re open on the long weekend, what fish we’ve got, whether they can order for a party. Now Domenico handles all that. We don’t have to stop what we’re doing every five minutes. The calls just get sorted.”— Illustrative quote · Hector’s Fish and Chips, Rye VIC
Illustrative quote based on customer experience
Your business has the same problem.
Whether you’re a tradie, a hospitality business, or any service business that gets inbound calls — the AI answers every one, 24/7.