What it answers on its own

Nine at night, and someone wants to know what a balayage costs and whether there's anything on Saturday. Nobody is at the desk. By morning they've booked somewhere else.

The assistant is for that hour. It's optional, it ships Off, and it only ever speaks from things you can point at in your own settings.

Deciding when it speaks

Settings → Web chat → AI concierge, under When it answers:

• Off — humans only. This is where every salon starts.
• After hours — it answers only while you're closed. Recommended, and the reason is that it's the shift nobody was covering anyway.
• Backup — it steps in during opening hours too, but only after a message has sat unanswered for the number of minutes you set.
• Always — it replies first, around the clock.

In every mode, one thing overrides all of it: the moment anyone on your team replies, the assistant goes quiet on that thread and never speaks in it again. Taking over is just typing.

What it knows

Five things, and no others: your salon's name, your business hours, your active services with their prices, your booking link, and whatever you type into Extra knowledge.

That box is the whole lever. Parking, your cancellation policy, the brands you carry, whether you do children's cuts — anything a person at the desk would answer without thinking belongs in it. If it isn't in those five sources, the assistant doesn't guess; it fetches you.

Offering real times

This is the part worth being precise about, because it's the part owners are right to be careful with.

When a visitor asks about booking, the assistant scans your actual availability for the week ahead and offers up to three open times as tappable buttons, each showing the time in your salon's clock and the stylist's name.

So both of these are true, and both matter. The assistant never books, charges or changes anything. And a stranger can absolutely end up in your diary from a web chat, in about two taps — through the front door, not around it.

If your availability can't be worked out, it falls back to sending your plain booking link rather than offering a time it isn't sure of. Turn the whole behaviour off with Offer real times to book.

Where it stops

Some messages must never get a machine's answer, and the assistant checks for them before it consults the AI at all — which means the check still works on a day the AI is unavailable. Refunds, complaints, anything legal, and anything medical: a reaction, a rash, a burn.

It also hands over when a visitor asks for a person, when it isn't confident about what's being asked, and when it has already failed to answer twice rather than apologising a third time. The widget carries a Talk to a human link the visitor can press at any moment.

A handoff is final. It says so in your Inbox — the AI handed this off — it won't reply again on this thread — and it means it.

Every automated reply is labelled AI assistant with a sparkle, to your team and to the visitor. Nobody is ever led to believe they're talking to your front desk.

What it costs, and what it did

You set a Daily AI budget on the card. Past it the assistant stops answering and visitors get your away message and booking link instead — the channel never just goes dark. There's also a cap on how many turns it will take in any one conversation, so nobody can sit there running it up.

The last 30 days card underneath answers whether it's earning its keep: conversations, how many it answered, how many it handed to you, how many led to a booking, and what it cost.

Below those, when there are any, it lists questions the AI couldn't answer. That list is the most useful thing on the page — it's a to-do list. Paste the answers into Extra knowledge and it handles them next time.