How Caversham Wildlife Park Stopped Missing Calls with AI

If you have ever visited Perth with kids, chances are someone told you to go to Caversham Wildlife Park. It is one of Western Australia's most beloved family attractions. Over 200 species. More than 2,000 animals. Kangaroos you can hand-feed. Wombats. Koalas. The whole experience.

But behind the scenes, the park had a phone problem.

Their reception team was fielding hundreds of calls every week. The vast majority were asking the same handful of questions: What time do you open? How much are tickets? Can we do a group booking? Is the park wheelchair accessible? How do I get there?

These are perfectly reasonable questions. The trouble was that the people answering them were the same people trying to manage ticketing, greet visitors at the gate, coordinate group arrivals, and keep the front desk running during the busiest periods of the year. Something had to give, and what gave was the phone.

The Problem: Hundreds of Calls, Not Enough Hands

During peak visitor season, the park's phone would ring constantly. And constantly is not an exaggeration. School holidays, long weekends, and the tourist season between October and March meant that the reception desk was simultaneously managing a queue of families at the gate and a ringing phone that nobody had time to pick up.

Missed calls meant missed revenue

Every unanswered call was a potential group booking that went to a competitor. A family that decided to go somewhere else because they could not get through. A tourist who picked another attraction from the list because Caversham's phone just kept ringing. The park had no way of knowing exactly how many bookings they were losing, but the team knew it was happening. They could see the missed call logs piling up at the end of each day.

Staff pulled away from visitor experience

When staff did answer the phone, it pulled them away from the people standing right in front of them. A family at the ticket counter had to wait while the receptionist explained opening times to someone on the phone. Group coordinators arriving for a pre-booked visit found no one available to greet them because the desk was tied up on a call about ticket prices. The phone was actively making the in-park experience worse for visitors who had already showed up.

The same questions, hundreds of times

This was the part that really stung. The questions being asked on the phone were almost always the same. Opening times. Ticket prices. Directions. Group booking enquiries. Accessibility information. Animal encounter schedules. The answers were on the website. They were on Google Maps. They were on the park's social media pages. But people still called, because that is what people do when they want a quick answer and they are planning a day out with the family.

The Solution: Meet Milly

We built Milly. She is a conversational voice AI agent with a warm Australian accent, trained entirely on Caversham's own information. When someone calls the park, Milly answers. Instantly. First ring. Every time.

She knows the opening times. She knows the ticket prices for adults, children, concessions, and family passes. She can explain how group bookings work and what the minimum numbers are. She gives directions from Perth CBD, from the airport, and from Fremantle. She knows which animal encounters are running today and what time they start. She can answer questions about wheelchair access, pram-friendly paths, and where to find the picnic areas.

She does all of this in a natural, friendly tone that sounds like she actually works at the park. Because in a very real sense, she does.

Trained on Caversham's own information

Milly was not built from a generic template. Every piece of information she draws from came directly from the park. Their operating hours for each season. Their pricing structure with all the different ticket types. Their group booking process and terms. The layout of the park. The accessibility features. The animal encounter schedule.

This matters because generic answers would have been worse than no answer at all. If someone calls asking about koala encounters and Milly gives them information that does not match what happens at the actual park, that is a problem. Accuracy was the baseline, not a stretch goal.

Answers every call, 24/7

Before Milly, calls after hours went to voicemail. Most people did not leave a message. They just moved on. Now, someone planning their weekend on a Thursday evening at 9pm can call the park and get the information they need to commit to a visit. Someone in a different time zone researching Perth attractions at midnight can call and get real answers. The phone is always answered, regardless of when it rings.

For a visitor attraction, this is a bigger deal than it might sound. A lot of family trip planning happens in the evenings, when the kids are in bed and the parents are figuring out what to do on Saturday. If you cannot get through to a venue at that point, you pick a different venue.

Routes complex queries to the right person

Milly handles the bulk of incoming queries, but she is not trying to do everything. If a caller has a complaint, needs to modify an existing booking, or asks something that goes beyond the park's standard information, Milly lets them know she is going to connect them with a team member. She does not loop them through endless options or try to handle something she was not built for.

The handoff is clean. She thanks them for calling, explains that a team member can help with their specific request, and routes the call. Simple and honest. Callers appreciate that more than being kept on the line while an AI fumbles through something it cannot actually resolve.

What Changed After Milly Went Live

The impact was noticeable from day one, but the full picture took a few weeks to become clear.

Staff could focus on the people in front of them. This was the change the team felt most immediately. The reception desk was no longer torn between visitors at the gate and a ringing phone. Staff could give their full attention to the families walking in, the group coordinators arriving for their visit, and the hundred other things that need managing at a busy wildlife park. The phone was handled. They did not have to think about it.

No more missed calls. The missed call log that used to grow throughout the day stopped growing. Every call was answered. Every caller got the information they were looking for, or was connected to someone who could help. The park went from losing an unknown number of potential bookings to capturing every single enquiry.

Evenings and weekends were covered. The after-hours voicemail was effectively retired. People calling in the evening or on weekends got the same quality of response as someone calling at 11am on a Tuesday. For a family attraction where most visit planning happens outside business hours, this was a meaningful shift.

Why This Works for Visitor Attractions

Wildlife parks, theme parks, museums, gardens, farms, and any other visitor attraction share a common trait: they get a high volume of calls asking a small number of questions. And the people asking those questions are usually in planning mode, trying to decide whether to visit. If they cannot get the information they need quickly, they pick somewhere else.

Voice AI is a particularly good fit for this sector because the information is stable and well-defined. Opening times change seasonally, not daily. Ticket prices are set. Directions do not change. Group booking terms are standardised. The knowledge base is compact, concrete, and easy to keep accurate.

Compare that with, say, a legal firm where every enquiry is different and requires professional judgment. Visitor attractions are almost the opposite. The questions are predictable, the answers are factual, and the main thing that matters is being available when the phone rings.

The key takeaways from the Caversham deployment:

• Answer the phone, always. It sounds obvious, but missed calls are invisible lost revenue. You never see the booking that did not happen because the caller could not get through. Milly eliminated that problem entirely.
• Free your staff for what matters. Reception staff at a wildlife park should be greeting visitors, not reading opening times down the phone for the 40th time that day. Automating repeat queries gives your team their time back for the work that actually needs a human.
• After-hours coverage is not a luxury. Families plan outings in the evenings. Tourists research attractions at odd hours. If your phone goes to voicemail after 5pm, you are losing visitors to competitors who answer theirs.
• Personality matters. Milly has a warm Australian accent and a friendly tone because she represents a family attraction. The voice and personality of an AI agent should match the brand it represents. A wildlife park is not a bank. It should not sound like one.
• Keep it honest about limitations. Milly does not pretend to handle things she cannot. She routes complex queries to humans cleanly and quickly. Callers trust that, and the staff appreciate not getting calls that have already been mishandled by an AI trying to do too much.

Is Your Attraction Losing Calls?

If you run a visitor attraction and your front desk is constantly choosing between the phone and the people standing in front of them, this is a solvable problem. It does not require a massive technology project or months of implementation. Milly was built and deployed in weeks, trained on Caversham's own information, and started handling calls from day one.

The first step is working out what your call volume actually looks like. How many calls are you getting? How many are you missing? What are the most common questions? If the answers are "a lot", "more than we would like", and "the same five things over and over", then you are looking at exactly the kind of problem voice AI was built to solve.