Stop missing calls with the best salon answering service
Capture appointment requests and answer common questions 24/7 with Sona, OpenPhone’s AI agent. Always make yourself available to customers and work efficiently as a team with the best phone system for growing businesses.
Trusted by over 60,000 businesses
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Smarter than voicemail, more effective than live salon virtual receptionists
Sona greets callers, answers questions, and captures detailed messages all within your business phone system.
Why Sona is a better virtual receptionist for hair salons
Here’s why Sona is a better option compared to other traditional call answering services:
1. Integrates directly in your business phone
OpenPhone is a modern business phone system that helps salons manage calls, texts, and client communications in one place. Sona works seamlessly within OpenPhone — Sona’s calls, summaries, and transcriptions also all live in your OpenPhone workspace.
Use our call routing features, like phone menus, to create the perfect client experience. For example, during business hours, you can set up your phone menu. That way, customers who want to book an appointment can go directly to your front desk, while customers who have questions about pricing or services can speak to Sona.
Traditional answering services operate outside your business phone, which means you can’t respond instantly when a potential client calls or an existing client wants to reschedule. Your team has to toggle between different systems, which adds more work to their plate. It can lead to a disjointed client experience and can affect your team’s morale over time.
2. More cost-effective
Sona helps you save thousands of dollars a year. Traditional live answering services cost 3x-7x more than Sona. With high monthly plans and additional per-minute pricing, these services can quickly get expensive.
With Sona, you pay just $49 per month for 50 calls. Additional calls cost $0.99 each. Since you’re charged per call instead of per minute, you can estimate how much Sona will cost every month. You can accommodate short appointment booking calls and longer service and pricing inquiry calls, too. Another way we keep Sona business friendly: we don’t charge you for calls that end in less than 15 seconds, so any spam calls or wrong numbers won’t be charged to you.
3. Consistent service
Train Sona once with your salon's service menu, pricing, policies, and preferred responses. No more worrying about new receptionists misquoting your balayage prices or forgetting your cancellation policy. Test every response before going live. Hear exactly how Sona represents your business to new and existing clients.
On the other hand, traditional live receptionists take weeks to set up. Even after rigorous onboarding and training, you aren’t guaranteed a consistent level of service. Third-party services constantly face staff turnover, which can affect your service quality. As an AI answering service, Sona always shows up and represents your business on brand, every single time.
An AI assistant for your salon’s front desk
Set up Sona to handle your calls in minutes.
Add Sona to call flows with no code
Drag and drop Sona into your existing call flows, no coding required. Sona can handle calls during and after business hours. Use it alongside OpenPhone’s call routing features, like phone menus, ring order, and call forwarding.
Provide Sona with your salon's policies
Share your salon’s business information, including policies and answers to FAQs, so that Sona can give accurate answers to your clients.
Customize how Sona takes messages
Sona can ask follow-up questions based on specific keywords when it takes a message. For example, if a customer is interested in scheduling an appointment, Sona can ask them if they have a stylist preference and make a note of it.
Review Sona's call history instantly
See Sona’s call summaries, transcripts, recordings, and messages in your OpenPhone inbox right after a call ends. Catch up with calls while you’re on the go without missing a single update.
Feature comparison
See how Sona compares to traditional call answering services.
Features
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Sona
Traditional answering services
Starting price per month
$49 for 50 calls, $0.99 per call for additional calls
~5x-7x the cost of Sona
Setup time
Instant
2-4 weeks
Brand voice and tone
Consistent
Highly variable
Monitoring
100% in OpenPhone
Custom solution or daily email summary
Integrations
HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Make, Jobber, and more
Limited integration options
How to set up Sona in four steps
It only takes four steps to get started with Sona:
- Start with a free trial.
- Try our free trial features, including calls and recordings.
- Configure your Sona settings and test Sona in OpenPhone’s call flow builder.
- Once you’ve confirmed it’s a good fit, activate your OpenPhone account and get the Sona add-on.
“With Sona, I never worry about missing a call again. It’s like having a smart, reliable assistant who always picks up. It’s professional, friendly, and on it 24/7.”
Why thousands of teams choose OpenPhone
See why small and growing businesses rate OpenPhone as the #1 business phone provider by customer satisfaction in G2.
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Get a number for every stylist
Add as many phone numbers as you need with OpenPhone. Add local US or Canadian numbers for each salon location and offer region-wide customer support with a North American toll-free number if you have a salon franchise.
Each OpenPhone plan includes a dedicated number for each user. Give every stylist a dedicated number to build their client relationships. They can instantly recognize whether an incoming call is personal or work-related so your team always answers business calls professionally. With business hours and work schedules, you can adjust notifications to your team so they don’t receive calls or texts after hours.
Need even more numbers for your salon? Additional numbers cost $5 per number per month.
Work more effectively as a team
Elevate your client experience using shared inboxes in OpenPhone. Split responsibility for incoming calls and texts with shared numbers so you don’t miss new client bookings.
Tag teammates with questions about a particular treatment or assign follow-up tasks using internal threads. Check to see if a colleague is caught up on a client request with inbox viewers.
Deliver a personalized experience with every visit using OpenPhone. With features like custom properties and contact notes, you can take note of a client’s treatment preferences so they feel valued.
Manage incoming client calls smoothly
Design powerful call flows that adapt to your salon’s rhythm with OpenPhone. Set up your call flows in minutes with our visual call flow builder. Add call flow steps that guide your calls to the right stylist or department or a recorded message with helpful information, like directions to your salon.
Each call flow step helps you handle your incoming calls easily. Send incoming calls to your team — by ringing them simultaneously or in custom batches — with ring groups. Give your callers self-serve navigation options with phone menus, for example, with keypad options to reach each stylist. Route emergency phone calls to a secondary number with our call forwarding options.
Build customer relationships over text
Understand what clients want for an upcoming appointment. Share photos of different hairstyles or cuts they might find interesting with MMS messages. If you’re busy or unavailable, you can always respond to client texts promptly with SMS auto-replies. Answer common questions about different hair treatments quickly with pre-written text templates, also known as snippets.
Always send the right message at the right time with OpenPhone’s automated text messaging capabilities. Build text workflows with our Zapier or Make integrations that automatically send appointment confirmation texts, appointment reminders, and more.
Say goodbye to repetitive administrative tasks
Focus on delivering the best service to your clients — we’ll take care of the administrative work that can slow down your team.
Automatically record your calls and instantly generate AI-powered call summaries and transcriptions. Never lose track of your customer details and reference call summaries to make sure you’re ready for upcoming appointments. Use AI call tags and have AI analyze your phone calls to give you valuable insights into your customer needs.
Nurture your long-standing clients in your CRM. Sync calls and texts automatically with our CRM integrations — use our HubSpot and Salesforce integrations or build your own integration with Zapier, Make, or the OpenPhone API.
Use OpenPhone anywhere, on any device
Run your salon from anywhere with true flexibility. Whether you’re at home, at the salon, or on the go, OpenPhone helps you stay in touch with customers and on top of your schedule.
Your team can use their existing devices to make calls with OpenPhone. Our apps are available for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and the web. All you need is an internet connection to get started.
Find out how much you’re investing in your business phone solution upfront on our pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Can’t find the answer here? Check out our Resource Center.
An answering service handles your business calls when you can't answer them yourself. Instead of calls going to voicemail, a receptionist (either human or AI-powered) answers on your behalf, takes messages, provides information, and ensures every caller gets a response.
Here are three benefits you should know about salon answering services:
- Never miss new client leads: If you’re a fast-growing salon, you might not be able to have front office staff to schedule appointments for you. A 24/7 phone answering service can capture new client leads so you can follow up and get them an appointment with your team.
- Answer common questions: New clients might want to know about your service offerings and pricing before they decide to make an appointment. With an AI voice agent, you can answer their questions at any time without having to get on the phone with them.
- Take detailed messages: Capture what type of service a customer wants before they book their appointment. AI receptionists like Sona can gather specific treatment preferences so you can deliver a high-quality in-person experience.
Traditional salon answering services typically start at $200-$350 per month for a monthly allotment of 50-100 minutes, after which calls are charged by the minute. These per-minute charges can increase quickly as you grow, making them difficult to predict from one month to the next.
Sona offers transparent, predictable pricing at $49 per month for 50 calls, with additional calls at $0.99 each. Your monthly costs are more predictable because we charge you for every call, not every minute. And calls less than 15 seconds don’t count toward your usage.
Call centers can help manage high call volumes, but they often lack the personal touch salon owners need. Call center agents who are juggling multiple types of businesses often don’t understand the nuances specific to the beauty industry.
An in-house AI virtual receptionist service like Sona provides consistent, knowledgeable service trained specifically on your salon's offerings while maintaining the friendly, professional tone that builds client loyalty. If Sona makes a mistake, you can edit its settings instantly so that it provides accurate responses to your clients. You don’t have as much control when you outsource customer service to a call center.
Voicemail is a one-way communication channel between callers and businesses. Voicemail quality varies depending on the caller because it’s an open-ended channel to leave a message. For example, potential clients who are looking to book appointments often hang up before they leave a voicemail, which leads to missed opportunities for your business.
In contrast, an answering service is a two-way communication channel. Callers can have an interactive conversation with the human or AI receptionist, and they can be prompted to leave detailed messages that are actionable for teams. Potential clients who leave their information with a salon might decide to wait for a callback instead of double-booking their appointment with a competitor.
In our biased opinion, the best salon answering service for small and growing businesses is Sona. It's cost-effective for independent stylists and small salons, sophisticated enough to handle complex service menus and policies, and integrated directly into OpenPhone's complete business phone system.
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