How we built a receptionist that answers the phone for a salon

Tuesday, 11:40

We are describing an example, but you will probably recognize your own salon in it. A beautician is halfway through a facial, wearing sterile gloves, with a client in the chair. The phone at the front desk rings for the third time in a quarter of an hour. It might be a regular client who wants to move an appointment, or someone new who found the salon on a map.

Every option costs something. If the beautician interrupts the treatment, the client in the chair loses a few minutes of the hour she paid for. If nobody answers and the call is returned in the evening, the new caller may already have booked somewhere else. And after 7 pm the salon is closed and the phone keeps ringing, because people book appointments when they finish work themselves.

What happens to a call nobody answered

In the Recepcjo panel you set the salon's working hours separately for each day of the week. Outside those hours, a voice agent picks up the call right away. During working hours, the team's phones ring first, and the agent takes over if nobody picks up within the number of seconds you choose.

The caller hears a voice that introduces itself with the name you chose and says right away that it is an AI assistant. A regular client is recognized by her number, if you have her in the phone book.

From a voice agent to a whole phone system

At first we wanted to build our own voice agent: a program that talks on the phone in Polish. Along the way it turned out that the agent alone is useless until there is something to connect it to. The system has to decide whether a call goes to the front desk or to the agent. The conversation has to be recorded and described, and the appointment saved in a calendar. So we built a whole phone system for a small business: a number, a switchboard, call recording, a calendar and a panel where the salon sets everything up. Of the more than a hundred tasks we listed along the way, only a dozen or so concerned the voice agent itself.

Several agents work on one conversation

Recepcjo is a system of several AI agents, each with one job. The first talks to the client live: it knows your salon, checks free slots and books the appointment. When the conversation ends, the next ones take over. One turns the recording into text, another writes a short summary from it, and another picks out the agreements and dates. You get a ready description of the conversation in the panel.

The agent knows your business and stays on topic

A voice model happily talks about anything. Asked for a cake recipe or legal advice, it would answer, and on your salon's number. That is why the agent in Recepcjo knows your business context and keeps to it during the conversation. It knows what you do, when you work and which slots are free. When a question is not about the salon, it briefly declines and returns to what the salon can help with. It does not promise anything on your behalf that it is not sure about, so a question about a price it does not know is noted and passed on to the team. A salesperson calling with an offer is politely thanked and the call is ended. Anyone who calls can leave a message and book an appointment.

The appointment goes into the calendar during the call

A client calls in the evening and wants to book for Thursday after work. The agent looks at the salon's calendar, suggests a free hour and makes sure they understood each other. Once the client confirms, the appointment is saved. A regular client can move or cancel an appointment the same way.

You keep the calendar in the Recepcjo panel, in a week or month view, and that is also where you add appointments booked in person. If you use Google or Apple Calendar day to day, appointments from Recepcjo can be copied there.

Every conversation is saved

Recepcjo records all calls to the salon's number, including those answered by someone on the team. After the caller hangs up, the panel shows the recording, a transcript and a summary in a few sentences.

It is most useful in the morning. You open the list of yesterday's calls and see who called, about what, and what was agreed. When a client says she booked a different time, you can listen to that conversation.

If the caller does not agree to being recorded, the agent ends the call and you receive an email saying that someone tried to reach you.

Your salon's phone, wherever you work

Together with the account, the salon gets its own phone number. You can give it to clients or ask your operator to forward calls from the number they already know.

You answer wherever it suits you: on your mobile, on the computer at the front desk or on an ordinary phone on the counter. You write the greeting the caller hears in your own words, and Recepcjo reads it aloud. If you step out of the salon and cannot pick up, the agent takes over the call after a moment. All you need to set this up is a browser and the phone you already have.

What Recepcjo will not do

Recepcjo does not replace a receptionist. The agent answers when a human cannot, and it does not know a client the way someone who has worked with her for years does. If you have a receptionist, Recepcjo takes the after-hours calls off her plate, along with those that come in while she is talking to someone at the counter. If you do not, you gain someone who answers and takes notes, and you still make the decisions.

You can see how it works in practice at https://recepcjo.ai.