Salon Chatbot: Answer Client Questions From Your Website
Clients ask a hair or beauty salon the same things again and again: which services do you offer, what are your opening hours, do you take walk-ins, how do I cancel, where can I park. Many ask in the evening, when the team is busy with a client or closed. A salon chatbot built on your own website can answer these questions at any hour, show where each answer came from and leave a message for your team when it cannot help. It does not take bookings or payments, and it should not pretend to. This guide is for hair and beauty salons and barbers, and shows how to set one up in five steps.
Step 1: List the questions customers ask most
Open your inbox, social messages and notes from the front desk for the last few months and write down the questions you answer most. Typical ones are services and who offers them, opening hours, location and parking, how to book or change an appointment, cancellation wording, gift cards and what to expect at a first visit. Write each in the client's words. Sort them into questions with a stable answer, which suit a chatbot, and questions that depend on the day or the diary, which need a person.
Step 2: Put the answers on pages the chat can read
The chat can only answer from what it can read. Make sure each answer is written in plain text on a public page of your website: services, team, location and directions, policies, FAQ. You can add a PDF or Word document, such as a service list or a policy sheet, as a file. Create your chat, enter your website address and choose the pages it should learn from. Pages behind a login cannot be read. Each answer comes with a numbered source next to the sentence, so a client can open the page behind it, and the chat never states a price, date or policy that your pages do not state. Ask it a question your pages do not cover: it should say it does not know and offer the next step you chose.
Step 3: Write exact answers for the things that must not vary
Some answers must never vary: opening hours, your cancellation wording, how to book. For these, write a saved answer on the Knowledge page. Add the question the way a client would ask it, add up to five other ways of asking it, write the answer and choose "Reply with this answer exactly". A saved answer is live as soon as you save it, without waiting for a sync.
Step 4: Decide what happens when nobody is available
Decide what the chat does when it cannot help. Without handoff, it can show a contact form, which needs an email, so you can reply when you are back. Human handoff is off until you turn it on for an agent. With it on, a client can ask for a person, but only within the opening hours you set and while someone on your team is online. Outside those hours, or with nobody online, the client leaves their details in the contact form.
Step 5: Add it to your site and review what people ask
After you go live, OneType shows your script line, which goes just before the closing body tag; the same line works anywhere you can add custom code. Open your published site in a new tab and look for the chat button in the corner. OneType shows when your site first loads the chat, with your site's address. The chat loads only on the domains you allow. After a week, open the questions the chat could not answer: they are grouped by meaning, with a count, so you can see what to add. Put the missing information on a page or write a saved answer, and it is live from the next conversation.
Try it on your website
Learn how saved answers keep key facts exact, see how the chat is trained on your website, or start free.