AI-Powered Call Routing Helped Talking Stick Golf Club Create a Faster, More Accurate Caller Experience
Talking Stick Golf Club is a premier 36-hole Scottsdale golf destination owned and operated by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the club combines championship golf, stunning desert scenery and a hospitality-driven guest experience rooted in stewardship and service.
That guest experience extends well beyond the course itself. Between golf reservations, dining inquiries, tournaments, instruction, weddings, banquets and practice facilities, Talking Stick Golf Club manages a wide variety of guest interactions every day.
With more than 45,000 inbound calls annually, the organization needed a more effective way to answer guest questions, route callers appropriately and improve the customer experience from the very first interaction.
Working together, Reinvent enabled Salt River Connect with the MyCloud AI Receptionist solution, helping Talking Stick Golf Club modernize how inbound calls are answered, routed and resolved.
The Challenge: Too Many Calls Falling Outside the Booking Center’s Purpose
Before implementing MyCloud AI Receptionist, Talking Stick Golf Club relied on a third-party answering service primarily designed to handle tee-time bookings. While effective for reservations, the system struggled to support the full range of guest inquiries coming into the golf club each day.
Of the club’s 45,000 annual calls, only around 15,000 were actually related to booking tee times. The remaining calls involved questions about restaurant availability, dress code, directions, operating hours, golf instruction, practice facilities, weddings, banquets and other guest needs.
Because the answering service team was not on-site and lacked full visibility into day-to-day golf club operations, callers were sometimes routed incorrectly, transferred unnecessarily, or provided incomplete information.
Roy Smith, CEO of Talking Stick Golf Club, explained that the organization was dealing with “thousands of calls a month,” many of which eventually ended up back at the golf course after going through the call center.
The larger issue was the impact on the guest experience.
“It was creating a very bad experience for our guests,” Smith said. “They had to go through all of these steps just to get to somebody who actually works here.”
For a hospitality-focused organization, improving the caller experience became the priority. The goal was not simply reducing call volume, it was ensuring guests could get accurate information and reach the right destination faster.
The Solution: Reinvent Enabled Salt River Connect With MyCloud AI Receptionist
To help solve these challenges, Reinvent enabled Salt River Connect with MyCloud AI Receptionist, an AI-powered virtual receptionist platform designed to intelligently manage inbound customer interactions.
Talking Stick Golf Club implemented MyCloud AI Receptionist as the first voice callers hear when contacting the organization. Instead of routing every inbound call directly to the answering service, the AI receptionist now acts as an intelligent front door for guest communications.
The system answers calls immediately, asks how it can help and determines what the caller needs.
For example:
- Guests asking about restaurant hours can receive answers instantly
- Callers with questions about dress code can receive immediate information
- Customers wanting to book tee times are transferred directly to the reservation concierge team
Importantly, Talking Stick Golf Club did not need to replace its existing reservation process. Instead, MyCloud AI Receptionist helped ensure the booking center could stay focused on its primary role: scheduling tee times.
As Roy Smith explained: “The call center was there for one reason, and that’s to book tee times.”
By enabling Salt River Connect with MyCloud AI Receptionist technology, Reinvent helped create a more streamlined experience where callers could quickly reach the right answer or destination without unnecessary transfers or delays.
A Collaborative Deployment Process
The implementation process was designed to be practical, collaborative and tailored specifically to Talking Stick Golf Club’s operational needs.
The Talking Stick Golf Club team completed an onboarding survey detailing business operations, common guest questions and communication workflows. MyCloud AI Receptionist was then connected to approved information from the club’s website to help ensure accurate responses.
Before launch, the system was tested against real-world caller scenarios, including:
- Long pauses
- Muffled voices
- Common guest questions
- Natural conversation patterns
Once testing was complete, the experience was fine-tuned and deployed quickly.
The solution also introduced a feedback loop for ongoing optimization. When callers cannot receive the correct answer, MyCloud AI Receptionist can generate email notifications containing caller details and issue summaries so staff can follow up directly. Those interactions also help identify opportunities to improve website content and AI training over time.
The Results: Faster Answers, Better Routing and Improved Guest Experiences
After only a few weeks of using MyCloud AI Receptionist, Talking Stick Golf Club began seeing meaningful improvements in how inbound calls were handled.
The biggest improvement was giving callers a faster and more direct path to the right answer or destination. General questions could now be handled immediately by the AI receptionist, while reservation requests continued flowing directly to the booking center.
For guests, the experience became significantly smoother:
- Fewer unnecessary transfers
- Less confusion
- Faster access to information
- Better responsiveness for common questions
For the reservation call center, the solution reduced the number of calls unrelated to tee-time bookings.
For staff, it reduced avoidable interruptions while providing a more reliable process for identifying guest issues that still required personal follow-up.
Smith described MyCloud AI Receptionist as: “A very useful tool to help distribute phone calls to the right person.”
His advice to other businesses facing similar communication challenges was direct: “You’d be silly not to move to something like this. It’s a better customer experience and a better way to handle a large volume of phone calls.”
Modernizing Hospitality Communications With AI
Talking Stick Golf Club’s experience demonstrates the practical value of AI-powered communications technology in hospitality environments. The goal was never to replace hospitality with automation; it was to improve how guests are supported from the very first interaction.
By enabling Salt River Connect with MyCloud AI Receptionist, Reinvent helped deliver an AI-powered communications solution that improves caller experiences, streamlines operations and helps ensure every guest receives faster, more accurate support.
The result is a modern, scalable approach to guest engagement that helps Talking Stick Golf Club better serve callers while allowing staff to focus on delivering exceptional in-person experiences.