Salons
Yes: Voice Assistant picks up your salon's number with a greeting you write word for word, answers questions from your opening hours and what you have written about your services, walk-ins and prices, and sends you a summary by text or email so you can ring back between clients. It does not book: appointments stay with your own booking system, or with whoever at the salon takes bookings.
You are halfway through a full head of foils, gloves on and lightener on the brush, when the phone on the shelf by the retail products starts to ring. It rings out. Twenty minutes later it goes again. By the time the last foil is folded and your hands are washed, there are two missed calls on the screen and nothing in the voicemail, and you can more or less guess what they were, because it is nearly always the same few questions: are you open Saturday, do you take walk-ins, what does a root touch-up cost. Each one has a short answer. You cannot give it with colour on your gloves and a timer running on somebody's head, and there is nobody else to give it either, because in a salon your size everyone who could pick up is holding a brush too.
Because the work does not leave a clean hand free. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety's fact sheet for hairdressers counts answering telephone calls among the general tasks a hairdresser may have, in the same list as monitoring processing times during treatments. Under preventive measures, the same sheet says to wear personal protective equipment such as gloves and an apron or eye protection when handling, mixing or applying chemical treatments, to wash straight away with soap and water after any skin contact with a chemical or product, and to wash hands regularly, especially before and after each client. Set those side by side and the phone is going to lose to the colour, which is the right way round. What changes is that the call you cannot take still gets answered, and the first thing the caller hears is the greeting you wrote.
What you have written about price, and nothing else, because apart from your hours the box of plain writing is all it has to go on. You might write what a cut and a blow-dry start at, that every colour service is quoted after a consultation, or that you would rather not quote prices on the phone at all; it works from whichever you chose, and it cannot price a head of hair it has never seen. Since those words are yours, read them against the Competition Bureau's guidance on drip pricing. The Bureau says that promoting a price that cannot actually be had, because of fixed charges or fees the customer must pay, is against the law unless the charge is only an amount imposed on purchasers by federal or provincial legislation, such as sales tax, and that a variable fee could still raise concerns. Its own question for any price claim is a fair one to put to a salon menu: will customers be surprised by extra fees?
It can tell them how walk-ins work at your salon, if you have written that down, and it knows your opening hours, so a caller asking whether you are open late on Thursday gets a straight answer. What it cannot do is look at today. It does not open your schedule and it does not offer times, so it has no way of knowing whether a chair comes free at two. Write the walk-in line the way it really works — weekday afternoons when somebody is free, first come first served, no holding a spot by phone — and that is what it works from when a caller asks, before the goodbye you wrote, while a summary of the call goes to you.
No. It does not book, move or cancel appointments, it does not offer times, and it cannot put a caller through to you at the chair, because it does not transfer calls. Booking stays where it is today: in your own booking system, or with whoever at the salon takes bookings. What the assistant passes on is the caller's details. Each caller is added to your client list with the summary on their record, so whoever rings back to book has the number, the name if the caller gave one, and what was asked for in one place.
As a written summary of what the caller wanted, sent by text or email to whichever addresses you list — your own mobile, the salon inbox, or both. You read it at the basin while a toner sits, and call back between clients already knowing it is a bang trim, a question about Saturday or the price of a gloss. There is also a switch that sends the caller a short text after the call. One practical point: a summary sent by text turns up wherever texts do, so decide whose phone gets it, and whether that phone lies face up on a station where clients can read it.
The assistant does, with the same greeting it uses mid-colour. In Ontario, the province's guide to the Employment Standards Act says an employee must not work more than five hours in a row without a 30-minute eating period free from work, and that even a paid meal break has to be free from work to count as one. Eating a sandwich at the front desk while answering the salon line is hard to describe that way. If the person who usually grabs the phone is an employee, a line that is answered for them at noon means the phone is no longer the reason they cannot step away.
First, in the summary you are sent and on the caller's record in your client list. Beyond that, our privacy page sets out what is kept from each call, where it is processed and for how long; the call itself and its summary are processed in the United States. Recording is a separate switch, and it is yours, so settle where it sits before the line goes live. A caller may tell a salon things that have nothing to do with a trim — that they are expecting, that their hair is thinning, that the last colour stung their scalp — and the federal Privacy Commissioner's guidance on recording customer calls notes that a recording can capture incidental personal information a caller offers that is not relevant to the call. For businesses covered by PIPEDA, the federal private-sector privacy law, and as best practice for those that are not, that guidance says to tell the customer the call is being recorded, state the purpose clearly and obtain consent; in most cases consent is implied when the caller carries on knowing the call is recorded and why. It adds that callers must be given a choice about whether their voice is recorded, and that where recording is not integral to the service, the business must offer an alternative unless a PIPEDA exception to consent applies. If you switch recording on, saying so, and why, belongs in the greeting you write, along with the alternative you offer a caller who would rather not be recorded.
An illustration, using an invented salon; it is not a customer. Juniper & Pine is a three-chair salon over a bakery in a small Ontario town: the owner, one other stylist, an apprentice, and a cordless phone on the shelf with the retail products. Before the line goes live, the owner writes the greeting: "Hi, you've reached Juniper & Pine. We're all with clients right now, so this is the salon's assistant. I can tell you our hours, how walk-ins work and what our services start at, and I'll make sure a stylist gets back to you." Then the box of plain writing: cuts, colour, balayage and keratin smoothing, but no extensions; walk-ins welcome on weekday afternoons when a chair is free, first come first served, with no holding a spot by phone; what a cut and a blow-dry start at; every colour service quoted after a consultation; and bookings made by the salon, never by the assistant. At twenty to twelve on a Thursday the owner has foils in a regular's hair and gloves on. A caller asks whether they can walk in at lunch for a bang trim, and what a gloss costs. They are told how walk-ins work, from what she wrote, and that colour is quoted after a consultation, and then hear the owner's goodbye promising a call back. When she has rinsed and changed her gloves, she reads the summary on her phone — a bang trim at lunch, a question about a gloss — and rings back between clients, using the number on the caller's record in the client list; the apprentice then puts a gloss consultation into the salon's own booking system. The assistant booked nothing, offered no times and transferred nothing. Recording stays off, because the owner settled that on day one, and voicemail is left on, so that on the two days a week the salon is closed, a caller who hears the out-of-hours message can still leave one.
It opens with the greeting you write, word for word, and it ends with the goodbye you write; the out-of-hours message is yours as well. In between it is an ordinary conversation, and a caller can interrupt it. Write the greeting the way you would answer the phone yourself on a quiet morning, and read it aloud once before it goes live.
It gives no medical advice, so it will not tell the caller whether colour is safe for them; that is a question for their own doctor or pharmacist. What it does is take the message and send you the summary, so you know what the call was about before you ring back.
Yes. By default it answers in whichever of English or French the caller speaks, and a line can be set to always speak French. If your salon is in Quebec, the Office de la protection du consommateur notes that the Charter of the French language recognises consumers' right to be served and informed in French there, and that the Office québécois de la langue française is the body that enforces it.
Your out-of-hours message, in your words, whenever they ring: it answers day or night, including when you are closed. Voicemail is a switch, so leave it on if you want callers to be able to leave a message, or turn it off if you would rather they did not.
There is a blocked numbers list for those. The calls you do want, from regulars and from people who have never been in, each land in your client list with the summary on their record — the same list that visitors and form senders go into.
Setting this up is our work, not a form you fill in. We go through your wording with you, and you can change any of it afterwards.
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