Questions worth asking first
Including the three a marketing page normally hides: the minutes really do run out, some channels need a provider's verification before they answer, and almost nobody is using this yet.
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.
What happens when it does not know something?
It says it will find out, takes a message, and files the question in your dashboard as a knowledge gap with the caller's exact words. That gap is the thing you answer once, after which it answers it forever. It is built to say “I'll find out” rather than to guess well.
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 it book into my diary?
Yes. Harkbell keeps a diary for you with clash detection, and it books straight into Square Appointments, Calendly or Acuity if that is where your bookings already live. Connect a Google or Outlook calendar on top and it also stops offering hours you are busy in — which covers Fresha, Booksy, GlossGenius, Mindbody and Vagaro, since those all sync out to one of the two. If you keep no bookable diary at all, it takes a structured booking request instead — the service, up to two preferred windows, and their details — and sends it to you to confirm in one tap. Confirming writes the appointment into Harkbell's diary and onto the calendar you connected; it does not reach inside Fresha, Booksy, GlossGenius or Mindbody, which sync out to a calendar and take nothing back, so you add that one entry yourself. Which route you are on is one choice for the business rather than one per service — a connected diary books every service on your list — and a request is also what the agent falls back to when that booking system cannot be reached mid-call, so an outage costs you a tap rather than the caller. A pending request holds nothing: the time stays bookable until you confirm, and a confirmation that has been overtaken tells you the slot has gone rather than double-booking you.
Does it work on the phone, or only on my website?
Both, and the phone is the main event. A real phone number is included from Essential up: claim one, and it answers every call on it, day or night, and transfers to you when the caller asks for a person. The website widget is the same agent on the free plan. WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are the same agent on the apps people already message you in, on the Social and Powerhouse plans.
Does it make calls, or only answer them?
Both, once it has a number of its own. A message it takes becomes a callback task, and one tap has the agent ring that person back from your number, in its own voice, and report whether it spoke to them, left a voicemail or got no answer. Write it a note — “tell him the part arrived” — and it calls with that as its brief, now or at a time you choose. Switch on phone reminders and it rings clients before their appointment; when you are shut Monday while you move, one message rings everyone it applies to. The automated ones keep to daytime hours where the person is, nothing is dialed that asked not to be, and marketing by phone is not built, on purpose.
Does it text my customers?
Not yet — texting is not switched on for any business today, and the agent will not promise a caller one. Booking confirmations, reminders and your deposit details go by email instead. Clients can send reference photos in a DM on Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp. When texting does arrive, US carriers will need to register your business first, whatever platform sends the texts, and that takes days rather than minutes.
What happens when I run out of minutes?
Your agent stops, and you will have known it was coming: we email you at 80% of your plan's minutes and again when they are spent, and the billing panel warns at the same point. It is not a surprise and it is not an overage bill. The website widget stops answering and so do the calls the agent places for you. Your phone number is not released or re-pointed, but the full agent stops answering it: callers hear one short line saying nobody can take the call right now and are offered the chance to leave a message, which arrives in your callbacks, so a number printed on your door never rings out to silence. Anything answered past the allowance is on us. Upgrading, or a new billing period, puts it back on air with the same embed code.
Who can hear my calls?
You. Recordings and transcripts live on our servers in Northern Virginia, in the United States, and you can read any call back months later from the dashboard. We do not sell your data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not use your calls to train AI models of our own. Whether a speech provider may use audio to improve its models is set in our agreement with that provider; ask us and we will tell you the current setting. Ask us to erase them and we will — the Delete your data page sets out exactly how, what goes, and the few things we are obliged to keep.
Does it work for my trade?
Harkbell is sold for eight trades, each with a brief of its own. Anything else gets the general brief plus everything you write down yourself. The trade brief is what adds the vocabulary and the limits on top. If your business needs more than that — a brief of its own, its own systems connected, or more calls than a plan holds — we also build custom versions: say so on the contact page. On the Business plan, tailoring the agent to your trade, or building it for one we do not list, is free.
What if my callers do not speak English?
The agent is told to answer in the language the caller speaks and to fall back to English, and the models underneath it are multilingual. What it says is still assembled from what you typed, so your service names and your prices come out in the words you wrote them in rather than translated ones. We have not measured it language by language, so if a real share of your callers speak Spanish, try the demo in Spanish before you count on it.
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.
Still not answered? Ask us the awkward one.
A real person reads hello@harkbell.com and you will get a straight answer, including when the answer is “not yet”.