VAPI•6mo ago

Assistant rejected eligible booking

Hi team,
For this particular call, a customer has asked to book for 8 people at 12oclock at X1 restuarant which is eligible for a booking.

For some reason, the Assistant said the X1 only accepts bookings between 11AM-2PM and 5PM-8:30PM. It then suggested to book at X2 or walkin which it is prompted to do.
The Assistant though, should have not rejected the booking at X1 as the request is within the eligibly times? I'd like to understand how this has happened to avoid losing bookings for our client.

Prompting:
X1 Restaurant: Lunch daily from 11 A.M. to 2 P.M., and Dinner Sunday to Thursday from 5 P.M. to 8:30 P.M., and Dinner Friday and Saturday from 5 P.M. to 9 P.M.
X2: Open daily. Breakfast from 7 A.M. to 11 A.M. and Lunch from 11:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. and Dinner from 5 P.M. until late.
IMPORTANT NOTE: X2 only accepts bookings for Breakfast and Dinner. No bookings are accepted for Lunch at the X2 between 11:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. (walk-ins only).
IMPORTANT NOTE: X1 only accepts bookings for Lunch and Dinner.

Call ID: 2a9c7576-0d44-4055-b445-71410d6c9c6d
What happened
00:34: Assistant says "Unfortunately, X1 only accepts bookings for lunch from 11 AM to 2 PM and dinner from 5 PM to 8 30 PM. Would you like to book for a different time or perhaps try a walk in at X2?
What should have happened
Assistant should have continued with taking the booking.

unexpected-ivoryOP•6/25/25, 5:27 AM

We have had another call come through with this same issue. This would be important for us to fix asap: 1fd5fcb2-7975-4f82-9006-791f306ad56c

01:13: Assistant says: Unfortunately, X1 does not accept bookings for lunch. Would you like to try a walk in at Hive or book for dinner at X1 instead?
Instead of the above, the Assistant should take this booking as X1 restaurant accepts bookings for lunch.

unexpected-ivoryOP•6/26/25, 3:25 AM

@Vapi looping the team in on this as we haven't yet received a response. Hoping to get this looked at quickly so we can resolve the issue

unexpected-ivoryOP•6/26/25, 3:30 AM

We have had another call with this issue: 8f1c4b57-b766-49bd-b338-34c9ca3bfa49

00:51: X1 is open for lunch daily from 11 AM to to 2 PM, but unfortunately, it is not available for bookings tomorrow.
This information is incorrect as per our prompts above. X1 accepts bookings for Lunch and Dinner. Assistant should be taking this booking.

Can we please urgently get this looked at for insight on why this is suddenly happening. thanks.

VapiAPP•6/26/25, 4:29 AM

Hey Beck, I checked your call_id and it looks like the tool_call to retrieve the availability wasn't called. This seems to be more of a prompting issue that you'll need to address.

Also, fix the LLM model to gpt-4o-2024-11-20 via API and it will fix the issue.

Ccomprehensive-tomato Hey Beck, I checked your call_id and it looks like the tool_call to retrieve the...

unexpected-ivoryOP•6/26/25, 4:55 AM

Hi @Sahil thanks for your input. I believe the AI did not call the tool because it assumed the enquiry is not eligible for the booking. So what is happening is that the AI is incorrectly saying bookings are not available because they only accept bookings between 11AM - 2PM but the customers are booking for 12PM which is in the correct timeframe?

If the scenario was correctly understood, the AI would have called the tool.

AI was working fine with the prompts we had but then suddenly started doing this the last few days. We also noticed all the calls are for 12PM bookings. Do you have any suggested prompts for this we could try?

unexpected-ivoryOP•6/27/25, 4:30 AM

Hi @Vapi team, it is confirmed this is consistently happening for customers who are asking to book for 12PM lunch. For any other time, this is not happening.
Here is another call: fe1e8f47-de07-41f6-9612-207909a3d309

Again, customer is asking to book for 12PM and the AI is saying they only accept bookings between 11AM - 2PM. The AI should not be saying this as 12PM is within 11AM and 2PM?
Can we please have a deeper look into this? As our cllient is missing bookings because of this.

We have checked over our prompts and time tracking which all looks good. Not sure what is triggering the AI to do this.

VapiAPP•6/27/25, 4:58 PM

Hi @Beck I’ll review this later today once I’ve wrapped up a few meetings.

Ccomprehensive-tomato Hi @Beck I’ll review this later today once I’ve wrapped up a few meetings.

dangerous-fuchsia•6/30/25, 2:39 AM

@firefly_0206

Problem 

The assistant rejected valid 12 PM lunch bookings at Dine, despite our prompt clearly allowing 11 AM–2 PM reservations.
 Call ID fe1e8f47-de07-41f6-9612-207909a3d309fe1e8f47-de07-41f6-9612-207909a3d309—“8 people for Saturday at 12 PM” was incorrectly refused.

### Fix

Upgrade model

   {
     "model": "gpt-4o-2024-11-20",
     "temperature": 0.1
   }

   {
     "model": "gpt-4o-2024-11-20",
     "temperature": 0.1
   }

Prompting Improvements

Time Validation Rules

   - 12 PM = 12:00 noon (midday)
   - 12 AM = 12:00 midnight
   - 11:00 AM–2:00 PM (inclusive) = valid lunch window at Dine

   - 12 PM = 12:00 noon (midday)
   - 12 AM = 12:00 midnight
   - 11:00 AM–2:00 PM (inclusive) = valid lunch window at Dine

Mandatory Workflow

   1. Collect guests, date, time  
   2. Validate time within operating hours  
   3. If valid → call BookingAvailability function  
   4. If invalid → suggest alternatives  
   5. Never reject without checking availability

   1. Collect guests, date, time  
   2. Validate time within operating hours  
   3. If valid → call BookingAvailability function  
   4. If invalid → suggest alternatives  
   5. Never reject without checking availability

Special Noon Handling

   - 12 PM is peak lunch time  
   - Always proceed with availability check for 12 PM  
   - Do not reject based on assumptions

   - 12 PM is peak lunch time  
   - Always proceed with availability check for 12 PM  
   - Do not reject based on assumptions

Roll-out Plan

Immediate
• Switch to gpt-4o-2024-11-20gpt-4o-2024-11-20 and test the 12 PM scenario.
Phase 2
• Insert the above prompt sections.
• Run end-to-end tests across all time slots.
• Monitor for consistency and edge-case behavior.

Please let me know if have any questions!

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