The same price questions, every evening
How much is it, how long does it take, can I have it the same day. Ten questions you answer a hundred times by phone, message and social media. What it really costs and how to get them off your plate.
Try this exercise: take a notebook and, for one week, write down every question a client who has not yet booked asks you. Almost certainly you will end up with a short, much-repeated list. How much is laser hair removal on the legs. How long does a facial take. Can I have a pedicure on the same day as my nails. What is the difference between classic lashes and volume lashes. Do you have packages. Does microblading hurt. You answer them by phone, by message, on Instagram, at the counter and on the way out of the treatment room. It is the same ten questions wearing different faces.
We have no statistic for how many times a day this repeats across the industry, and we are not going to put one here. But you hold the notebook list, and it is the best evidence there is. Each answer costs little: thirty seconds. What costs is the sum: interrupting what you are doing, switching to a different face, starting again. They are small interruptions with a large cost in concentration, spread across a working day in which your main tool is your attention.
Why the question is always the same
Because your website, your profile and your treatment menu are not where the client is looking at that moment. The person asking is rarely reading your menu at leisure: she is on the sofa, or at work, or in the car, and wants an answer within a minute. She would rather ask than search. And when you reply, the answer is almost mechanical: it is on your menu, with the price and the duration. The knowledge already exists, written down, somewhere. What is missing is someone to read it out when asked.
There is a less obvious part: giving the same answer all the time does not make you a better professional, and sometimes it makes you a worse one. By the fourth time in a day you answer in a hurry, you forget a detail ('the price for full legs does not include the bikini line') and the client arrives at her appointment expecting something else. Repetition invites mistakes, not attention.
Three costs you do not see
- Treatment-room time: every time you step out to answer, the session runs over or the rhythm of the person in front of you is broken.
- Rest: you answer during your break, over lunch, in the evening. Phone work eats exactly the hours that are not work.
- Uneven answers: depending on the day and how tired you are, you give slightly different information. Over time, two different clients carry two different prices in their heads.
What people usually try
- A fixed price list on Instagram or on your website: it helps whoever reads it. Plenty of people prefer to ask anyway, and a price list does not answer what is not written on it ('is it suitable for sensitive skin?').
- Saved replies on your phone to copy and paste: they save typing when someone messages you, and they are no use over the phone.
- A booking app with your menu published: it shows prices and durations to whoever comes in to book. It does not answer someone who rings without opening the app, or someone asking something the menu does not cover.
- Not answering anything until you have finished: honest towards the client in front of you and expensive with the one who is ringing.
What a solution should do
The key is that the answer comes from your menu, not from anyone's imagination. If you charge a set price for an underarm laser session and it lasts a set time, that is what the person asking should hear, and if the assistant does not know something, it should not invent it: it should say it does not have that information and leave the question noted so you can answer it yourself. It also helps if it really answers by voice, because many of these enquiries arrive by phone, and if it does so when you are not available.
BeautySuite does exactly that with your menu: you can import it from your public Booksy or Treatwell profile, or type it into the panel, and the assistant uses it to give prices and durations by voice and by chat. After that it sends the client to your booking link. It does not make bookings on your behalf and does not change your diary; it answers the questions you answer today. We explain it step by step in the article on the treatment menu, and in the one on the voice call from your website if you want to see how the client reaches the assistant.
A limit worth knowing
The assistant is only as good as your menu. If a treatment is missing, it has no price for it; if a price on your menu is out of date, it will quote the out-of-date one. What it does with what it does not know, and with what it does know, you can hear in the recording of each conversation. Reviewing your menu once, properly, is all the upkeep it asks for.
If you want to compare with other ways of solving it (the booking app itself, a receptionist, a generic chatbot), below you will find how each option on the market handles it, with a link to the comparison for each one.