TL;DR
- Your suite has no front desk. The concierge is the front desk, on the number your clients already call.
- It books into your book while you keep working, and the client gets a text before she hangs up.
- You see every call afterwards: recording, words, summary, and whether she booked. The owner's X-ray, for one chair.
- From $149 a month. Set up on a half-hour call. It is a voice, not a person, and we say so.
The suite: one chair, one phone, one of you
You went independent for the money and the freedom, and you got both. You also got every job the salon used to do for you. You are the stylist, the front desk, the person who confirms Thursday, the one who chases the no-show fee, and the bookkeeper on Sunday night. The one job you cannot do is the phone, because the phone rings when your hands are busy, and your hands are busy because you are good at this.
So the phone buzzes in your apron while you foil. You glance, you don't answer, you tell yourself you will call back at the rinse. By the rinse there are two more. One was a new client who got your name from a friend. She has already texted the stylist in the suite next door, the one who happened to be between clients.
What suite renters do about it today
The usual fixes, honestly. A booking link in your bio and your voicemail: good for regulars who know what they want, useless for the woman with a box-dye situation who needs to hear a person say "yes, come in." A text-back to missed calls: catches the texters, loses the callers, and does nothing for someone who writes back in a language you don't read. The neighbor deal, "if I'm in color, grab my phone": fine for a week, until a client gets quoted her price for your service and nobody remembers who said what. All of these move the leak. None of them close it. The trade-offs are laid out in how to answer the phone while you're doing color.
What changes with a concierge on your number
Nothing changes for your clients. They call the number they have always called. What changes is that someone picks up. The concierge answers in the client's own language, hears that she wants a cut and gloss on Friday, looks at your book, offers 2:30, and books it. Her confirmation text lands before she hangs up: time, your name, your address. You find out when the foils come out, by reading a ten-second summary.
If she asks something only you can answer, the call comes to you with a note on why. If you can't take it, the note and the recording wait. You call her back knowing what she wanted, instead of "Hi, you called?" At seven on a Sunday, when clients actually have time to think about their hair, it answers the same way it does at eleven on a Saturday.
The owner's X-ray, for one chair
In a salon, the owner's screen shows four stylists. In a suite, it shows you, and that is the point. Every call this week with its outcome: booked, rebooked, handed to you, or slipped away with the reason in one line. How much of your week was booked. What came in while you were with a client. What your chair brought in by day, and what take-home products added, with an export your accountant can open without retyping.
The slipped-away list is the one you never had. Three people hung up after your color price this month. Two wanted Saturday and you were full. One asked for extensions, which you don't do. Each of those is a decision: say the price differently, open a Saturday evening, or stop paying for a listing that sends you extension clients. If you would rather count by hand first, the method is in salon call conversion rate. The full screen is on the reporting page.
The honest part
It is a voice, not a person, and a few callers will notice. It cannot greet a walk-in at your suite door or take a card. It costs money every month whether the phone rang or not, so count your calls for a week first and see what you are missing. If the booking app you already pay for has added a phone answerer, try it; then ask the three questions you should ask anyone, including us: can I hear the recording of a real call, does it answer in my client's own language, and what do I see afterwards about the calls that did not book. At one busy Los Angeles salon, Salonity Concierge has answered and summarized more than 870 calls so far, and every one can be played back.
If you are mobile, work from a home studio, or freelance across salons, the version of this page written for you is an answering service for independent stylists.