The AI Chat Assistant
What your website's AI receptionist can do for visitors, and how a booking it proposes becomes a real, confirmed appointment.
If you've turned on the AI Receptionist style for your website (see Your Salon Website), visitors get a chat window instead of — or alongside — the static page. Here's what it actually does, and what it doesn't.
What it knows and talks about
The assistant only ever answers using your salon's own live information — your current services and prices, your team and their bios, your real opening hours (including any holidays or special closures you've set), and your actual open appointment slots. It never makes up facts or guesses at availability: everything it says comes from looking up your real data at the moment the visitor asks.
It also only discusses your salon. If a visitor asks something unrelated — general knowledge, another business, or anything off-topic — it politely declines and steers the conversation back to what it can help with (your services, pricing, hours, location, contact details, and booking). This also means it won't be talked into ignoring its own instructions, even if a visitor tries to convince it to role-play as something else or reveal how it works.
What it shows visitors
Rather than long paragraphs of text, the assistant opens small interactive panels for things like:
- Your service menu with prices and durations
- Your team, with bios and portfolios
- Your opening hours, holidays and upcoming closures
- Your location and contact details
- A full booking flow (pick a service, a stylist, a day and a time)
- A whole week's worth of open times at a glance
- Your shop (if you sell products online) and your membership plans (if you offer them)
These panels always reflect your real, current data — so a visitor never sees a stale price or an appointment slot that isn't actually free.
How a booking proposal becomes a real booking
The assistant can help a visitor get to a confirmed appointment in two ways, but it never books anything by itself.
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If the visitor is vague about timing ("I'd like to book something", "can I get a haircut"), the assistant opens the step-by-step booking panel. The visitor picks their own date and time against your real availability, enters their name and contact details, and taps to confirm it themselves.
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If the visitor is specific about a day and time ("tomorrow after 4pm"), the assistant checks your real open slots, matches the closest fit, and — once it has a slot plus the visitor's name and an email or phone number — puts together a booking proposal for the visitor to review. The visitor still has to tap a confirm button themselves; the assistant never creates the appointment on its own.
Either way, the appointment only becomes real once the visitor explicitly confirms it on their end. At that point, the same checks your usual booking process runs — checking the salon is open, the slot is still free, and any payment rules you've set — all apply, and the visitor gets the same booking confirmation email as if they had booked directly through your booking page.
Because the assistant always proposes rather than books, you don't need to worry about it double-booking a slot or confirming something you haven't set up — your real booking rules (hours, availability, payment) are the final word every time.
A quick summary for owners
- It answers questions using only your real, current salon data — never invented facts.
- It stays on topic to your salon and won't be redirected elsewhere.
- It can walk a visitor toward a booking, but the visitor always makes the final confirming tap.
- Anything a visitor books through the chat goes through the exact same rules and confirmation email as a booking made directly on your website.