Every one of these sounds impressive for ninety seconds. The differences show up in the second week, so here are the questions that surface them early — and our own answers, including where they are not the ones we would like.
1. What does it do when it does not know?
The single most important question. You want an agent that says it will find out, takes a message, and hands you the exact question it could not answer. An agent that improvises is worse than no agent, because you find out from a customer who arrived expecting a price you do not charge.
2. Does it check the diary before it names a time?
Some agents offer a time and create a request; some check live availability first. The difference is whether you spend Monday morning apologising for slots you had already sold.
3. Does it know your trade, or just your business name?
Ask the demo something in your trade's vocabulary — “can you fill a set from another salon”, “do you do cover-ups”, “there's water coming through the ceiling”. A generic agent hears three bookings. A trade-aware one hears one technician's judgement call, one consultation, and one urgent enquiry.
4. What does it refuse to do?
If a vendor cannot answer this, the agent has no limits, which means its limits are whatever the model felt like that day. For anything clinical, this is the question that matters most.
5. What happens when you run out of minutes?
Three answers exist: it stops, you get billed for overage, or nobody says. Find out which before the month you get busy. Ours stops, and warns you at 80% and again at zero.
6. Can you hear it before you pay?
Not a recorded sample — your own agent, with your prices, answering a question you chose. Anything less is a showreel.
7. Where do the recordings live, and who trains on them?
Your callers' voices are your customers' data. Ask where it is stored, how long it is kept, and whether it trains anybody's model. Get it in writing — a privacy policy, not a sales email.
8. What does it hand you after the call?
A transcript is table stakes. What you actually want is the structured result: the booking, the callback with a number attached, the contact, and the question it could not answer.
9. Does it transfer to a person, and what if nobody picks up?
The failure case matters more than the feature. An agent that transfers into silence is worse than one that takes a message.
10. How long from signing up to answering?
If the answer involves an onboarding call and a specialist, that is a service with software attached, and it is priced accordingly.
11. How many businesses are using it?
Ask it plainly. A vendor that dodges is telling you something. So is one that answers honestly.
Our answers to the two that lose us sales
- Texting is not instant to switch on. US carriers register every business that sends texts — every platform, not just us — and that registration takes days rather than minutes. We submit it with you, and confirmations go by email in the meantime. A vendor who tells you their texting works the moment you sign up is either not sending through US carriers or is about to have their messages filtered while still reporting them delivered.
- The messaging channels need Meta's verification, and Meta sets that pace. WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger all require the business behind them to be verified before any software may answer on them. That is true of every tool in this category, it takes days, and anybody who implies otherwise has not shipped one. Start it early; your phone line does not wait on it.
Ask us these questions
All eleven, in an email, and you will get eleven straight answers — including the ones that talk you out of it. We would rather lose the sale than the second month.