Scenario · Salon or barbershop

AI receptionist for salons and barbershops.

An AI receptionist for a salon reads the booking, colour-quote and gift-card enquiries that arrive while every chair is full, drafts each reply from your service list and house rules, and leaves the calendar and the price with a stylist. One AI employee costs $149 a month on the Starter plan.

It runs over text: a form or quiz posts to the lead endpoint, the enquiry is stored, and the first reply is drafted on the next run. A request that arrives at 9 p.m. has a reply waiting at open. Phone answering is custom scope on an Enterprise plan, and the section on calls below says exactly where that stands.

Scope this desk See pricing

Unistaff · Salon

Front

ReadsBookings / Quotes / Retail

ChannelsWeb form / Quiz

Draft2–4 sentences

SendHuman

StatusDrafts waiting · 24/7

What arrives at this desk

The mix below is the deployment shape this scenario is written around. The timing column is the reason the work slips: most of it lands while the room is busy or after everyone has gone home.

Booking and reschedule requests

All day

“How much for colour on hair this length?”

Evenings

Cancellations

Late evening

Gift cards and retail products

Weekends

A wedding party wanting six slots

Weeks ahead

Patch test and allergy questions

Before a colour

“Do you do men's cuts and kids' cuts?”

Anytime

Stylists asking whether you are hiring

Anytime

What it takes on, what stays with a person

Read the person column as the job that remains, and staff for that job rather than for the whole desk. Every row matches what the platform does today.

Task	AI employee	Person
First reply to a booking request	AI employeeDrafts it with the service, the chair time it takes and what the stylist needs to know beforehand	PersonOpens the calendar and confirms the slot
A colour quote	AI employeeAsks the three questions a stylist needs — length, what is on the hair already, and the last treatment — and reads back what the client gave	PersonJudges the photo and sets the price
A price in the first reply	AI employeeMarks every number as pending your approval; a draft that states a price without that marker is rejected by the validator	PersonConfirms the number before it goes out
Gift cards, retail, parking, hours	AI employeeAnswers from the service list in one pass	PersonKeeps the list current
A late cancellation	AI employeeRecords it and drafts the reply your policy allows	PersonDecides on the fee
Patch tests and allergies	AI employeeSends the instruction you wrote and stops there	PersonTakes anything the instruction leaves open
A group booking for a wedding	AI employeeCollects the date, the headcount, the services and the timing as structured fields	PersonBlocks the chairs and answers on availability

Where it stops

The booking itself, refunds and fees, any quote a stylist has to judge from a photo, and every question your patch-test instruction leaves open.

What the owner keeps

The calendar, the price and the chair.

The three questions before a quote

A colour price depends on three facts, and a salon loses the booking while it waits for them. The first draft asks all three and reads back whatever the client already sent, so nobody is asked twice.

How long is the hair now?

Length sets the product volume and the chair time, which is most of the price.

What is on it already?

Box colour and previous lightening decide whether the target shade is one visit or three.

When was the last colour or treatment?

Timing decides what is safe to do in a single sitting and what has to wait.

The answers travel with the enquiry as structured fields, so the stylist reading it sees the three facts together instead of scrolling a thread.

Phone calls, honestly

Most pages selling an AI receptionist put a phone number in the hero. Text intake is what runs here today: a form or quiz posts to the lead endpoint, the enquiry is stored, and one email notification goes out with a five-second timeout — the enquiry reaches the database first, so a mail failure costs a log line while the record stays.

Voice is custom scope. The published plans are Starter at $149 a month, Scale at $599, and Enterprise at custom pricing; custom roles and custom workflows appear on the Enterprise column of the price table only. A voice desk starts as a scoping conversation about telephony, recording consent and who answers when the role stops.

The practical read: if most of your enquiries already arrive in writing, a text-first desk covers the volume today. If the desk lives on the phone, the first step is moving the repeat questions to a text channel and measuring what is left.

Web form and quiz intake

Live

The enquiry is stored on submit, and the first reply is drafted on the next run.

Lead notification by email

Live

One attempt with a five-second timeout; the outcome is logged either way.

Phone answering (voice)

Custom scope · Enterprise

Custom roles and custom workflows appear on the Enterprise column of the price table. A voice desk starts with telephony, recording consent and the handover rule.

Calendar booking

Scoped per deployment

No calendar connector ships today, so live availability is scoped before launch.

SMS and messenger intake

Scoped per deployment

No SMS or messenger connector ships today; the provider is chosen with you.

Full connector list with its evidence: /integrations

What it costs against the hours

The table is the site’s cost model run on this scenario. Fourteen hours a week covers the phone-and-inbox share of a busy salon. The 65% is lower than a plain front desk because a quote still ends with a stylist.

Read it as a comparison of hours. The share left over is the part of the desk that carries judgement — the exception, the upset customer, the decision — and it still needs a person. What changes is that the person spends the shift on those hours instead of retyping the same answers.

Run your own numbers Compare plans

Enquiry hours on the desk14 per week

Loaded hourly cost$35

Share handed to the AI employee65%

Hours handed off9 per week

Cost of those hours, per month$1,364

AI employee, per month$149 — Starter

Model, except the price. Hours and share are assumptions; $149 is published

The brief this desk writes

Setup is a writing job. The role reads this material on every run, so the quality of the brief sets the quality of the drafts. An afternoon covers the first version, and the shadow week corrects it.

The service list with chair time for each service, and what a price depends on.

The three questions a stylist needs before quoting a colour, in your own wording.

The cancellation and deposit policy exactly as you enforce it.

Patch-test instructions, and the point where a question becomes a stylist's to answer.

Gift card, retail and parking answers — the ones you retype every week.

Week one runs in shadow: every draft is read before it goes, and the material is corrected wherever the draft was wrong. At the end of it you have the share of drafts that went out unedited, which decides how much of the desk moves across next.

Questions people ask before they buy

It prepares the booking with the service, the timing and the details the stylist needs, and a person puts it in the calendar. Unistaff ships no calendar connector today, so a deployment that depends on live availability starts by scoping that connection.

Intake today is the web form and the quiz. A DM has to reach that form for the role to see it — a link in the bio, or a saved reply that points there, is how a salon bridges the gap. Messenger intake is scoped per deployment; the integrations page lists every connector that exists today with its status.

Today a person reads and sends every reply, so what reaches the client is your salon writing with a head start. When a role starts replying directly, the disclosure goes into the reply template and it is set up before that goes live.

One AI employee is $149 a month on Starter, with a 14-day pilot and cancellation at any time. The plan sets how many roles run at once rather than how many chairs you have: $599 a month on Scale covers up to five AI employees.

It collects the three facts a quote needs and marks any number as pending your approval. The stylist sets the price. That rule is enforced in code: a draft carrying a price without the pending marker is rejected before anyone sees it.

The enquiry is stored at 11 p.m. and the draft is written on the next pass, so the reply your policy allows is waiting at open. The decision on a fee stays with the salon.