Documentation

Introduction

niia is an AI receptionist that answers your salon's WhatsApp. Here's how it works:

1. A customer messages your salon on WhatsApp.
2. niia replies straight away, any time of day.
3. She answers questions about your services, prices, hours and location, checks real availability, and books, reschedules or cancels appointments.
4. You see every conversation and booking in the dashboard, and step in whenever you want.

Customers don't install anything. They just message your number as they do today.

Set up your salon

When you sign up at app.niia.ai, a four-step wizard collects what niia needs. Your progress is saved as you go, so refreshing the page won't lose your work.

Step 1: Create your account

Enter your name, email and a password, or click Sign up with Google. This becomes the owner login for your dashboard.

Step 2: Tell niia about your salon

Add your salon's name, address, country, phone, website, WhatsApp number and business hours. Your currency is filled in from your country.

To save typing, use one of the two shortcuts at the top of this step:

• Auto-fill from your website. Paste your website address and click Extract. niia reads the site and fills in your details, hours and services. If the site has FAQ or policy pages, she also suggests questions and answers for you to review later.
• Upload a price list, menu or photo. No website? Upload a photo, PDF, Excel or CSV file and niia fills in what she finds, usually your services and prices. The file isn't stored.

Check everything she fills in and correct anything that's wrong.

Step 3: Add your services

List each service with a name, category, price and duration. A price can be text, such as "From 50" or "On consultation". If you used a shortcut in step 2, your services may already be here.

Step 4: Choose how to start

Start the free trial with no card needed, or subscribe straight away. The trial lasts 14 days or 2,500 credits, whichever runs out first, and every feature is available to try. See Credits and billing for how credits work, and Pricing for the plans.

If you run more than one outlet, turn on Multiple locations? during sign-up. See Branches.

After sign-up

Your dashboard opens with a setup checklist showing what's left before niia can take real bookings. The two essentials are:

• Connect your WhatsApp number. See Connect WhatsApp.
• Add your staff and assign them to services. niia can only book a service that at least one active staff member offers. See Staff.

Connect WhatsApp

Entering your WhatsApp number at sign-up doesn't connect it. niia only starts replying once you link the number in Settings → WhatsApp Integration. There are three ways to connect:

• Shared account (the default). No setup needed beyond entering your WhatsApp number.
• Connect WhatsApp with Gupshup. Click the button, complete Meta's WhatsApp sign-up in the new tab, then come back and click I've completed setup — Check Status. You don't need a separate Gupshup account. If the number is also active in the WhatsApp Business app on your phone, messages you send from the phone appear in the dashboard too, and your existing chat history is imported once.
• Connect WhatsApp with Meta. Link your own number directly through Meta's sign-up pop-up.

Meta reviews the display name of every newly connected number. A warning that the name is "in review" is normal and usually clears within a few hours, occasionally up to 48. If Meta needs something from you, the warning says so under Meta setup warnings.

Test before you go live

Open Agent Config and use the Test Bot panel to chat with niia as a customer would. Ask about prices, opening hours and availability, and try making a booking.

• Test chats don't use credits and don't appear in Conversations, Customers, Alerts, the dashboard figures or your daily email.
• A booking made from the Test Bot is real, though. It appears on the Bookings page and holds the slot, so delete it when you've finished testing.

If niia gets something wrong, fix it at the source: your services, staff or hours, or the notes and Q&A in What niia knows.

Dashboard

The dashboard home is a quick health check of today. It shows four summary cards:

• Today's Conversations: WhatsApp chats that came in today, and the all-time total.
• Escalated: conversations niia flagged for your team.
• Total Customers: everyone who has ever messaged you.
• Avg. Sentiment: how happy your customers sounded, as a percentage.

Below the cards you'll find this week compared with last week, your booking conversion and cancellation rates, the five newest bookings and your latest conversations.

AI Analytics

For a deeper look, AI Analytics has four tabs, all filtered by the date range you choose:

• Conversations: sentiment (happy, neutral, frustrated or angry) and weekly volume.
• Intents: what customers message about, and the services they mention most.
• Bookings: booking trends and conversion.
• Revenue: revenue from bookings niia made, the average booking value and a weekly breakdown.

Conversations

Conversations shows every WhatsApp chat, live and past. Open one to read the full history, including what niia said and whether she handled it or flagged it.

• Voice notes: niia transcribes them and replies with both text and a spoken voice note. You can play both in the thread.
• Photos: they appear in the thread, but niia can't interpret images yet. She asks the customer to describe what they want in words, so follow up yourself if the photo matters, such as a reference style.
• Not delivered: if a reminder, workflow message or broadcast didn't reach the customer, a small flag appears under it.

Taking over a conversation

Click Take Over on any conversation to reply yourself instead of niia. Taken-over chats are marked in purple.

WhatsApp only allows a typed reply within 24 hours of the customer's last message. After that, the reply box changes to Send nudge. This sends a short pre-approved "we have an update for you" message, and once the customer replies you can type normally again. A nudge costs 5 credits.

When niia hands over to you

niia marks a conversation as Escalated (in red) when it needs a person. For example:

• A customer asks to speak to someone. niia tells them your team will be in touch and creates a callback request.
• A customer wants a home-visit service. niia doesn't take their address. She holds the slot as a Pending booking if someone is free, and escalates so you can call them.
• Nothing suitable is free in the next two weeks, and the customer accepts a call back from your team.

When niia can't book what someone asked for, she explains why and offers real alternatives, such as the next day you're open or the closest free times. She never just says "not available".

A conversation niia handled with no activity for 30 days is marked Closed. Nothing is deleted, and if the customer messages again a new conversation starts.

Alerts and notifications

Alerts collects everything that needs a person: escalated conversations, callback requests, angry or frustrated customers and failed bookings. Each alert has a short AI summary of what the customer needs, plus their last message.

• Click Resolve once you've dealt with it.
• Click Escalate to hand it to someone else. Everyone on that branch's team is notified straight away.
• The Callback tab shows customers who asked to be called back.

The notification bell

The bell at the top right shows booking activity as it happens, such as new, cancelled, rescheduled and completed bookings and no-shows. You can turn on a chime in Settings → Notifications.

If a conversation in Alerts goes 3 hours without a reply, you get a Customer Waiting notification, repeated every 3 hours until someone replies through Take Over. These notifications appear in the dashboard only, not by email or WhatsApp.

Bookings

Bookings niia makes appear here automatically. View them as a calendar (by day, week, month or year) or as a list. You can also:

• click + Add Booking, or an empty calendar slot, to add a walk-in or phone booking
• click a booking to change its date, time, service or status
• delete a booking

The statuses are Confirmed, Pending, Cancelled, Completed and No-show. Mark bookings Completed after the visit: review requests, customer spend and your daily email report all depend on it.

How niia books

• She checks availability as soon as she knows the service and date, before asking for the customer's name.
• She never books outside your business hours, on a closed day, or so that an appointment runs past closing time.
• With several branches, she confirms which branch the customer wants before checking times.
• Before booking, she reads back the service, date, time and staff member, and waits for the customer to confirm.
• The confirmation includes an "Add to calendar" link for the customer's phone.

Dates and times across the dashboard follow your salon's timezone, even when you sign in from somewhere else.

Google Calendar

The owner can connect one Google account from the Bookings page. That single connection covers the whole salon:

1. Click Connect Google Calendar.
2. Sign in with the Google account you want bookings to appear in, and approve access.
3. The status changes to Connected.

niia doesn't write into your main calendar. Instead, she creates a separate calendar for each branch, such as "Central Park Bookings", and copies over your existing upcoming bookings. From then on, a new booking adds an event, a reschedule moves it and a cancellation removes it.

• Pause syncing with the Sync toggle, for the whole salon or a single branch, without disconnecting.
• Branch Admins can click Add to my Google Calendar to get their branch's calendar shared with them.
• If a sync fails, for example because access was revoked, the badge shows "Sync failed". Reconnect to fix it. A failed sync never delays the customer's confirmation.

Personal staff calendars

Each stylist can also get a calendar with just their own appointments. On the Staff page, open a staff member with View and click Invite by email. They accept a normal Google Calendar invite and don't need a niia login. If you reassign a booking, it moves from one stylist's calendar to the other's.

Waitlist

When the time a customer wants is already booked, niia offers the closest free times and asks whether they'd like to join the waitlist for the time they asked for. Each place is for one exact slot: service, date, time and branch.

1. A booking is cancelled or moved, and its slot frees up.
2. niia checks a staff member is free, then messages the first person in line: "Good news! Your requested blowdry slot tomorrow at 4:30 pm just opened up. Reply YES within 30 minutes to claim it."
3. If they reply YES within 30 minutes, niia books it and confirms in the chat. The booking is paid at the salon.
4. If they don't, the offer expires and the next person in line is offered the slot. You get a dashboard notification.

The Waitlist page lists every entry with its status: Waiting, Offered, Fulfilled, Expired or Removed. Filter by status, or remove someone with the trash icon. Customers can ask niia where they are in line.

Customers

niia creates a customer record the first time someone messages you, and remembers their bookings. Returning customers are recognised, and niia can suggest what they had last time.

Each record shows the customer's name, WhatsApp number, notes and total spend from completed bookings. Click the clock icon to see their service history.

To bring customers over from another system, click Import CSV. Name, phone, email and notes columns are matched automatically. Customers that already exist are matched by phone number, and only their empty fields are filled in.

When you type a phone number, you can leave out the country code for local numbers. For customers from another country, always include + and the country code.

Services

niia uses your services list to answer questions and make bookings. Each service has:

• Name and category, such as Hair, Nails or Skin.
• Price and duration. Enter the duration in minutes, for example 90 for an hour and a half.
• Description (optional). If a service includes something customers ask for by another name, say so here, for example "Women's Hair Styling: includes cut and blow-dry". niia won't pass one service off as another.
• Auto Book. When this is on, niia can book the service without you confirming it.
• Where it's offered: in the salon, at the customer's home, or both. niia doesn't book home visits automatically. She escalates them to your team.

If a customer asks for something you don't offer, niia says so clearly before suggesting alternatives. To hide a service for a while, make it inactive rather than deleting it.

Staff

Add each team member with their name, role and weekly schedule, and optionally their gender.

• If a customer asks for someone by name, niia books with that person.
• If a customer asks for a male or female stylist, niia uses the gender you've set. Staff set to "Prefer not to say" are only matched by name.

What niia knows

niia answers from your own information. She builds what she knows from your services, staff, hours and salon details, so keep those up to date. In Agent Config you can add more:

• Additional Notes: anything your other settings don't cover, such as parking, how to find the entrance or payment options.
• Custom Q&A: your own questions and answers. Click Extract FAQs from website to pull suggestions from your site. Suggestions stay inactive until you switch them on.
• System Prompt and Behaviour Settings: niia's tone, and how she handles questions she can't answer.

If niia doesn't have an answer, such as about gift cards or retail products, she says so and offers a follow-up from your team instead of guessing. She politely declines anything unrelated to the salon. The quickest fix for a gap is a line in Additional Notes or a Q&A entry.

Languages

niia replies in the language each customer writes in. She supports more than 60 languages, including English, Arabic, Hindi and Tagalog. You don't need to set anything up.

Branches

If you run more than one outlet, add each one on the Branches page. You can have up to 5, or up to 3 on the free trial. Each branch has its own address, phone, business hours, Google Maps link and Google review link. Customers get the links for their own branch.

A branch selector at the top of the sidebar switches between All branches and a single branch, and every page filters to match. All branches share one credits balance.

Need more than 5 branches? Get in touch and we'll set it up.

Team and roles

Each dashboard user has one of three roles. The server enforces them, so nobody can see another branch's data by changing a link.

On the Team page, add users directly or create an invite link. Invite links work once and expire after 7 days. You can regenerate or revoke a link at any time. You can't remove the last owner, so you can never lock yourself out.

Reminders and reviews

Appointment reminders

In Settings → Appointment Reminders, choose when customers get a WhatsApp reminder: the morning of the appointment, 24 hours before or 48 hours before. To reschedule or cancel, customers simply reply to the reminder and niia handles it. Each reminder costs 5 credits.

Review requests

In Settings → Review Requests, turn on review requests and paste your Google review link. When a booking is marked Completed, niia asks the customer for a Google review. Salons with several branches use each branch's own link.

Workflows

A workflow is an instruction you give once: "when this happens, send this message". It then runs every day on its own. Click Add Workflow, give it a name, and choose when it starts:

Then add steps. A step is either a message or a wait. Messages use ready-made templates that WhatsApp has approved: you fill in the blanks and can add a photo.

• Stop once the customer books ends the sequence as soon as they make an appointment.
• Customers aren't flooded. If someone matches two win-back or rebook workflows on the same day, only one sends.
• Each workflow message costs 15 credits. How many workflows you can run depends on your plan.

Broadcasts

A broadcast is one message sent to many customers at once, such as a new service, a holiday offer or a last-minute opening. Choose:

• Message: your text, with an optional image.
• Audience: all customers, new customers, or customers with no booking in a number of days you choose.
• When: now, or at a time you schedule in your salon's timezone.

Click Preview count to see how many customers will get it. Each message costs 15 credits.

You can edit or cancel a scheduled broadcast before it goes out. Once it's sent, it can't be recalled.

Campaigns

If your Instagram or Facebook ads send people to WhatsApp, create a campaign for each ad and use its tracking link, for example https://app.niia.ai/go/your-salon/SUMMER25.

Each campaign shows its clicks, the conversations they started, the conversion rate, and the bookings niia made from those chats. Cancelled bookings aren't counted. If you link a campaign to particular services, only bookings for those services count. A campaign can also be tied to a single branch.

CRM integration

To send ad leads to your CRM, paste its webhook address into Settings → CRM Integration. This works with HubSpot, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign, or an automation tool such as Zapier or n8n. Leave the field blank to turn it off.

When someone messages you for the first time through a campaign link, niia sends their details to that address. These are the campaign name, the customer's name and phone number, the ad platform and the time.

If your CRM doesn't accept a lead, niia tries again a few times. If it still fails, the lead isn't lost: a banner shows how many leads are waiting and why. Once you've fixed the problem, click Retry.

Credits and billing

Every plan is a flat monthly price with no commission on bookings and no limit on the number of bookings. Messaging is paid for from one shared pool of credits for the whole salon, and you can spend it however you like:

• Credits reset at the start of each billing cycle. The free trial's 2,500 credits are a one-off allowance.
• If WhatsApp rejects one of niia's replies, its credit is returned.
• The Billing page shows your remaining credits and lets you change your plan. Your services, bookings and customers stay when you upgrade from the trial.

See Pricing for the plans and how many credits each includes.

WhatsApp payments

Customers can pay for their appointment in the chat instead of at the salon. To turn this on, open Payouts & Settlements:

1. Add your payout details: bank transfer, PayPal or Wise. They're stored encrypted.
2. Turn on Offer WhatsApp payment to customers.

niia then offers to send a secure payment link when someone books. The link expires after an hour if it isn't used.

The same page shows what you've taken, the fees, and what you're owed, week by week. When you receive a week's payout, click Mark as settled. You can export your payout history as a CSV file. If a customer pays at the salon instead, mark the booking paid offline.

Daily email reports

Every day at closing time, the owner gets a summary email. You don't need to turn it on. It includes:

• the services completed that day, and the fees collected
• your busiest hour and your top services
• cancellations and no-shows
• the average customer rating
• how many appointments are booked for tomorrow

Only bookings marked Completed count towards the services and fees, so update booking statuses each day.