What we have worked out so far
Comparisons with our own prices in the table, the questions worth asking any vendor including us, and posts on the calls that go wrong in the trades we cover. Every figure about another company is sourced and dated, and every figure about your own business is arithmetic on an assumption we state.
how these are written
Rules we hold ourselves to here
- No figure about another company without a primary source and the date it was read. Pricing pages change; a comparison quoting a number nobody can check is an advert.
- No invented customers. There are no case studies, no testimonials and no results on this site, because there is nobody to quote yet and a fabricated one would be worth less than nothing.
- No comparison we come out of unscathed. Our own prices are in the table, and where somebody else is the better answer for you, the post says so.
- No behaviour we have not built. The trade posts describe what our agents are actually briefed to say and refuse in that trade, and a test holds each post to the brief behind it.
“I'm calling from StubHub about an order” — the caller who is not your customer
Most calls to a ticket broker come from a marketplace's support desk, about one order, with a buyer waiting. The rep needs a next step for the case notes. What the phone has to collect, what it must never say about an order, and how it decides who gets a person.
Read →“Got anything at four?” — the barbershop call that should take thirty seconds
A barbershop caller wants a time today and wants the call over. Most answering setups turn that into a questionnaire. What a thirty-second booking actually needs, the three questions that never get a guess, and what a slow call costs a shop built on regulars.
Read →“Can you fill a set from another salon?” — the nail and lash call with no yes or no
A new client has a set on from another studio and wants a fill this week. Whether it can be filled or has to come off is the technician's call, and the phone has to book her anyway. What it asks, what it notes, and the lash call where booking stops.
Read →“It's a surprise for my wife” — the spa call that is not for the person calling
A lot of spa calls are gifts: a treatment for somebody else, a voucher, a booking for two. Each one hides a question the caller cannot answer and the phone must not guess. What gets asked, what gets written down, and what waits for a therapist.
Read →“Is it supposed to look like this?” — the PMU call that is not a booking
Four days after a brow session, a client rings to ask whether what she sees in the mirror is normal. What a permanent makeup studio's phone can safely say to her, what it must never say, and the other call that sounds like a booking and is not.
Read →“Is Maya in on Saturday?” — the two calls a salon diary cannot answer
Two questions arrive on every salon and barbershop phone line, and neither of them is a booking. Here is what the honest answer sounds like, and the four things you have to write down before anything can give it.
Read →“How much for a half sleeve?” — pricing a tattoo on a call that cannot price it
The most common call a tattoo or permanent makeup studio takes is a price question with no correct answer. What the phone can safely say, what it must never say, and the six-line brief it should collect instead.
Read →A job without an address is not a job
Trades lose more work to the phone than any other appointment business, and it is rarely the booking that fails. It is the four things nobody collected — and the five calls where a safety line comes first.
Read →AI receptionist vs a human answering service: what the difference actually buys
A human answering service starts around $300 a month for thirty calls. The AI ones start at nothing. Here is what each of those actually gets an appointment business — with the prices sourced, and ours footnoted.
Read →How to choose an AI receptionist: the questions that actually separate them
Every AI receptionist sounds good in a demo. Eleven questions that tell them apart — with our own honest answers, including the two that lose us sales.
Read →What an AI receptionist should refuse to do
The dangerous failure is not a robotic voice. It is an agent that is confident, fluent and wrong — and the fix is a list of things it must never say.
Read →Don’t see your industry? We build custom versions of Harkbell for other kinds of business, free on the Business plan. Talk to us about a custom build