The AI front desk that answers, books and follows up while your hands are full.
Harkbell picks up in two rings on your phone line and your website. It quotes the prices you entered, checks your real diary before it offers a time, books, tells the caller how your deposit is paid, and puts them through to you when they need a person. Afterwards it rings people back, makes reminder calls, and files every call where your team will see it.
No card to start · one line of code on the site you already have · your data erased on request
- Your phone line a real local number — every call, all night, five at once if that is what comes in. included from Essential up
- Your website one line of code puts a talk button on the site you already have. free, today
- Your messages WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, the same agent and the same diary. on the Social and Powerhouse plans
- Nova
Thanks for calling — are you calling to book an appointment?
- Caller
Sort of — my friend got the most amazing balayage from Jess. How much is that, and does she have anything Saturday?
- Nova
A balayage is $185 and takes about three hours. Jess has Saturday at 9:30 or 2:00 — would either work?
your price, from your list. She asked for Jess, so only Jess’s diary was checked.
- Caller
Ugh, 9:30 is my son’s football. Would 2:00 be done before a dinner at 6?
- Nova
It should — three hours has you finished around 5. Shall I put you in with Jess at 2:00?
- Caller
Yes please. It’s Priya.
- Nova
You’re booked, Priya — balayage with Jess, Saturday at 2:00. There’s a $30 deposit to hold it: Venmo willow-and-co, with your name in the note.
in Square before she hung up, and your own Venmo handle read out. No card asked for.
It works inside the software you already run.
Not a second diary to keep in step, and not a chatbot with a phone bolted on. It checks your real diary before it offers a time, writes the appointment where your front desk will see it, takes a deposit the way you already take one, and reads your own website for its answers.
- books into it
- checks, and copies bookings onto
- takes a deposit through
- learns from
- no booking software?
Running Fresha, Booksy, GlossGenius or Mindbody? They all sync out to Google or Outlook, and reading that calendar is enough to stop the double-booking. Every diary and calendar connection is on every plan, the free one included. A phone number comes with the Calling and Powerhouse plans; Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp come with Social and Powerhouse. See every integration →
It does the front desk's job, not the robot's.
Three more from the same evening, worked examples like the first: the calls an answering machine gets wrong and a good receptionist gets right. Each sheet ends on what the call became by the time it was over, and under them is the rest of the desk's job.
The price you never gave it
Call transcriptTue 8:04 pm · website - Caller
Do you do keratin treatments? Roughly how much?
- Nova
Keratin isn’t on our list, so I won’t guess at a price. Can I take your name and number and have the team ring you back with it?
nothing invented. The question is filed for you to answer once, and then it is answered for good.
Callback · knowledge gap“keratin?” — waiting for your answer, in the caller’s words.- Caller
The one that cannot wait
Call transcriptTue 8:31 pm · phone - Caller
I had my colour done yesterday and my scalp is really burning.
- Nova
I’m sorry to hear that. I won’t book anything — I’m getting this to the team straight away. What is the best number to reach you on?
stops booking, takes it as urgent, offers no remedies. The salon brief says so, and so does every trade’s.
Callback · urgentHer number and her words, pushed to the team’s phones.- Caller
The caller who needs a person
Call transcriptTue 8:52 pm · phone - Caller
Can I talk to an actual person? It’s about my extensions from last week.
- Nova
Of course — putting you through now.
a warm transfer to the number you set. Nobody free? It apologises once and takes the message instead.
Transferred · to youOr a callback in her own words, if nobody could pick up.- Caller
- Rings people for you. One tap rings a callback from your own number. A note — “tell him the part arrived” — becomes a call it places and reports back on, it reminds clients before their appointment, by phone, in the same voice, and “we’re closed Monday” can go to your whole client list. Daytime only, and never anyone who asked it not to.
- Answers from your own words. It reads your website and the short answers you wrote once, and quotes those and only those. Anything it could not answer comes back to you as a gap, with the caller’s exact words; answer it once and it is answered for good.
- Keeps one record per client. Every call it answered and every call it placed sits on that record, with the recording and the transcript, months later — one client, one history, matched on their number.
By the time you look up, it is all on one desk.
Five screens, one workspace, installable on your phone. Whatever happened while you were working is filed by the time you look, and the transcript behind every row is one click away.
- Booked Sat 2:00, balayage with Jess, Priya — written into SquareBookingsphone · 7:40 pm
- Could not answer “do you do keratin treatments?” — filed for you to answer onceKnowledge gapswebsite · 8:04 pm
- Callback the keratin caller — their number, for when you have the answerCallbackswebsite · 8:04 pm
- Callback, urgent “my scalp is really burning” — with her number, pushed to the team’s phonesCallbacksphone · 8:31 pm
- Transferred asked for a person and was put through to you — the recording and the transcript keptConversationsphone · 8:52 pm
- Note to ring about “Dana’s extensions are in” — the agent rings her at 9:00 am and reports backContactsyour note · 9:05 pm
Every one of these has its recording and its transcript behind it, months later. One tap on a callback and the agent rings them back from your number.every row filed before you looked up
What it will never do
- Invent a price, a time, or a policy you never gave it.
- Tell a caller they are booked when it has only taken a request.
- Promise a clinical or cosmetic result — that is the practitioner’s call, and the playbook for your trade says so.
- Keep talking to somebody who has said something urgent. It stops and flags it.
- Ring anyone who asked it not to, or place an automated call outside daytime hours where they are.
These are hard limits in the brief your agent runs on, per trade — not a tone setting you can turn off by accident.
What you are actually choosing between
Voicemail
free, and it loses the call
- Most callers hang up rather than leave a message.
- Nothing is booked, so you ring back and play phone tag.
- You never learn what the ones who hung up wanted.
A human answering service
warm, and usually cannot book
- Priced per call or per minute, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one — and you find out afterwards.
- They mostly take messages. Most cannot see your diary, so the booking still comes back to you.
- One person, one line. Two callers at once means one of them waits.
Harkbell
answers, books, and tells you what it missed
- A flat monthly price with the minutes stated. It stops rather than billing you for an overage you did not agree to.
- It books into your real diary, because it can see it — Square, Calendly, Acuity, your calendar, or one-tap requests.
- Every caller answered at once, every message a task somebody is pushed to clear, and every question it could not answer handed back to you.
Where a human service is genuinely the better answer — complex triage, a script that changes weekly, callers who will not tolerate software — we would rather say so than sell you the wrong thing. The long version, with our own prices in the table →
The three we get asked most, answered here.
Will it sound like a robot?
Hear it and decide — that is what the demo is for, and it takes one click with no sign-up. It runs on a speech pipeline rather than a single speech-to-speech model, which is what makes it interruptible: talk over it and it stops, the way a person would.
Will it make things up?
It quotes the services, prices and answers you entered, and nothing else. It checks real availability before it offers a time. The trade playbook it runs on carries hard limits — never promise a result, never quote what you have not listed, never say somebody is booked when it only took a request.
Can I cancel?
Two clicks, from the billing panel, and you keep the rest of the period you paid for. Nothing is deleted the moment you leave — ask and we erase it.
What an unanswered phone costs, on your own numbers.
Two figures you know off the top of your head, and what walks past each month. There is no recovery rate baked in — we do not have the customers to promise one — so this is what goes unrecorded, not what Harkbell will earn you. The full page questions every assumption.
The missed-call math
- Bookings lost a month
- 16
- Walking past you
- $960/mo
- Over a year
- $11,520
Assumes 60% of missed callers wanted to book, and 60% of those never ring back.
Question the assumptions — do the full math →Hear it on your own website this afternoon.
Start on the free plan with 30 answered minutes a month — enough to hear it on your own site and show the team. Plans that answer your phone start at $49 a month.
Answers day and night · books into your own diary · $0 to hear it on your site