Set your service times

Without a catalogue, the AI has to guess how long each service takes — and guessing means offering wrong-sized slots. A 15-minute consult in a 60-minute window wastes calendar space; a 2-hour deep clean in a 1-hour window makes you late to the next job.

The catalogue fixes this by giving every service a stable ID, a real default duration, optional buffer time, and a list of aliases (the words callers actually use). The AI looks up the service, picks the right duration, and only offers slots that fit.

Open Settings → Smart Booking → Services and click Add service. You'll see five fields:

• Label — the human name, e.g. "Deep clean".
• Default duration (minutes) — how long this service takes on average.
• Buffer (minutes) — optional pad after the service, for cleanup, notes, or travel. Leave blank to inherit your global default.
• Aliases — alternate phrasings callers might use, e.g. for a "Deep clean" you might add "big clean", "end of lease", "spring clean".
• Active — toggle off to temporarily hide a service without losing its config.

Save. The service is now available to the AI on the next call.

Duration is what shows up on the customer's calendar invite. Buffer is invisible time after the appointment — for cleanup, resets, notes, or travel between jobs. The AI avoids offering back-to-back slots that don't respect the buffer, so you get breathing room without explaining it to callers.

Examples:

• Haircut: 30-minute duration, 0-minute buffer.
• Facial: 45-minute duration, 15-minute room reset buffer.
• Mobile plumbing callout: 60-minute duration, 30-minute travel buffer.
• Dental check-up: 20-minute duration, 10-minute admin buffer.

For mobile services, prefer putting the travel time in the home-visit routing config rather than as a per-service buffer — routing accounts for the distance between jobs, not just after each one.

Callers don't know your internal service names. Aliases map the phrases they use to your canonical labels, so when a caller asks for "the scalp massage thing" the AI still finds your "Head spa" service.

Tips for good aliases:

• Include the colloquial names — "end of lease" for "Deep clean".
• Include common misspellings — "massarge", "physio", "botox".
• Include branded shorthand — "the basic", "the works".
• Don't include the canonical label itself — it's already matched.

Add aliases over time as you listen to real calls. The conversation log under Calls shows you exactly what callers said, so you can spot patterns.

By default, the AI does not quote prices on the phone. Prices on a catalogue entry are used for deposits and for your own dashboard, but the AI won't read them out unless the caller asks directly.

This is deliberate: most service businesses quote after seeing the job, and committing to a price on the phone paints you into a corner. If you're happy to quote flat-rate prices, add them to the custom instructions in Settings → Required call information so the AI knows it's OK to share.

Place a test call and ask for each of your services, using different phrasings. Verify that:

• The AI finds the right service (check the conversation log).
• The slots offered respect your duration + buffer.
• Aliases you set up actually match real phrases.

If something's off, tweak the catalogue entry and test again — changes are live on the next call, no redeploy needed.