How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for your salon

The first four are routine and repetitive — exactly what a bot should take. The last two are about judgement and feelings, and belong with people.

The order of questions matters, because each answer narrows the next:

1. Service first, as a list message grouped the way your menu is: Hair, Colour, Treatments, Skin, Nails, Grooming. A list message holds up to ten rows, so use categories first and the specific service second.
2. Stylist next — only those who do that service, plus "No preference". Regulars will pick their stylist every time.
3. Then the slot — only slots long enough for the service with that stylist. A two-hour colour should never be offered the 30-minute gap before lunch.
4. Confirm with everything in one message: service, stylist, date, time, price or range, and the cancellation rule.

Returning clients should be able to skip most of it: "Book my usual with Priya?" with [Yes, show times] [Something else] turns a five-step flow into two taps.

A mother and daughter wanting cuts at the same time, three friends booking before a wedding, a birthday party of manicures: group bookings need several stylists free at once, which is exactly where a simple one-service flow breaks. The bot can ask how many people and which services, then look for a time when enough suitable stylists are free together. If the combination is complicated — five people, three service types, a fixed deadline — it collects the details and hands the booking to reception with everything attached.

Notice what the business side does: it answers with the specific detail (time, reference, next step), it asks for one thing at a time, and it gives the customer a one-word way to reply. Those three habits matter more than how clever the bot is.

"How much for colour?" has no single answer in most salons. Price depends on length and thickness, and quoting the lowest figure only to charge more at the chair is the fastest route to a bad review. The bot can handle it honestly:

• Ask length with three buttons: [Short] [Medium] [Long].
• Reply with the range for that length from your menu.
• Say plainly that the stylist confirms the final price after seeing the hair, before starting.

Clients do not mind a range. They mind a surprise.

Reputoo supports both, and most salons end up using both:

• Keyword flows — a fixed menu or trigger word ("MENU", "BOOK", "STATUS") leads down a set path. Predictable, easy to audit, right for anything with a fixed answer.
• AI chatbot — reads the customer's own words and answers from your knowledge base (website, price list, policies). Right for the long tail of questions nobody wrote a menu item for.

A sensible start for a salon: keyword flows for the top two or three tasks, AI for everything else, and a person behind both.

Some requests cannot be booked blind — a colour correction, a big change, a treatment on damaged hair. The bot's job is to make the consultation efficient: ask for a photo of the current hair and a reference photo of what the client wants, ask when it was last coloured or chemically treated, and pass all of it to a senior stylist. The stylist replies with an honest view and the right booking length, instead of discovering the problem in the chair.

Write the rules once and let the bot apply them the same way every time: how much notice a cancellation needs, what happens to a deposit, how late a client can arrive before the service is shortened or moved. A client who cancels with enough notice should be able to do it in two taps and be offered a new slot straight away. A late cancellation, or a request for an exception, goes to the owner — rules applied by a bot feel fair only when there is a person behind the exceptions.

• Complaints, refunds and anything where the customer is upset.
• Anything involving money the bot cannot see — a disputed bill, a custom quote.
• Health, safety or legal questions.
• Any customer who asks for a human. Do not make them ask twice.

For salons specifically: colour corrections, reactions to products, and anything about a service the client was unhappy with need the stylist or owner.

Handover on Reputoo moves the chat into the shared inbox with the conversation so far, so staff never ask the customer to repeat themselves.

The reminder the day before is where a chatbot saves the most time, because it turns every "can I move it?" into a two-tap change instead of a phone call. The replies it has to handle:

• [Confirm] — marks the booking confirmed; nothing more to do.
• [Reschedule] — offers the same stylist's next open slots of the same length.
• [Cancel] — cancels, applies the notice rule, and offers the slot to the waiting list.
• A free-text reply — "running 10 mins late", "can I add a hair spa?" — goes to reception with the booking attached, because each needs a judgement about the stylist's day.

A handover is only as good as what comes with it. When the bot passes a chat to reception, the person picking it up should see, without scrolling:

• who the client is, and their last visit and stylist;
• what they asked for, in their words;
• any booking the chat is about;
• photos they sent, for consultations;
• why the bot handed over — a complaint, a request outside policy, a question it could not answer.

The bot also tells the client what happens next — "Our receptionist will reply within 15 minutes; we open at 10 am" — so a handover at night does not feel like being ignored. Staff reply from the same chat, and the client never repeats themselves.

1. Connect your WhatsApp number to Reputoo (official API; takes minutes).
2. Add your website and documents to the knowledge base so the AI answers in your salon's own terms.
3. Build keyword flows for the top tasks above. What to connect: A salon booking system with stylist calendars; per-stylist availability is what makes WhatsApp booking actually work.
4. Choose who gets handed-over chats, and during which hours.
5. Test from a personal phone, then share the number or a QR code with customers.

Many salons still take walk-ins, and a bot can make them less chaotic. A client can message "any slot today?" and get the next open times, or join a waiting list for a fully booked day and be messaged the moment someone cancels — first to reply gets the slot. It turns a cancellation from lost income into a filled chair, without anyone phoning down a list.

• Book each service category with each kind of stylist choice, including "No preference".
• Try to book a long service into a short gap; the bot should refuse and offer a real slot.
• Reschedule inside and outside the cancellation window.
• Ask a price for each hair length.
• Send a colour reference photo and check it reaches a stylist with the questions answered.
• Write in Hindi, English and a mix; ask for "haircut", "cutting", "trim" and "baal katwane hain".

Watch three things in the first month. Bookings completed in chat without staff typing anything — this should climb as regulars learn the flow. Handovers and their reasons — a question the bot keeps passing on is usually one missing line in the menu or the FAQ. And the phone: if the chatbot is doing its job, fewer calls interrupt stylists mid-service, which is the change your team will notice first.