Features
Change a price this morning. It quotes the new one this afternoon.
Voka reads your live Square Appointments or Acuity Scheduling catalog on every single call — your service names, your prices, your durations, the staff who actually work there. None of it is copied into a script, so there is nothing to retrain and no FAQ list to keep up to date.
That is the difference between an assistant that was told about your business once and one that looks it up while the caller is still on the line.
Voka AI is an AI voice receptionist for local service businesses: it answers the phone 24/7 and books, reschedules and cancels appointments in the business’s real Square Appointments or Acuity Scheduling calendar during the call. It reads that live catalog on every call, so it quotes the service names, prices and durations set in the account today, and offers only staff and times the business can actually work. Every call comes back as a recording, a transcript and an AI summary, and a caller who asks to be called back is flagged as a callback request. Calls that need a person are transferred to one.
Your live catalog
Nothing about your services is baked into a prompt
Every assistant claims to know your business. Most were told once, when someone pasted a menu into a text box. Voka goes and looks, on the call.
Your service names, your prices, your durations
The assistant offers services exactly as they are written in your account, at the price and length you set. Nothing is paraphrased into a generic menu, and an Acuity account is quoted in the currency that account uses.
Retired services stay retired
Anything you have withdrawn, and anything marked admin-only, is filtered out before the assistant sees it. A service you stopped offering cannot be sold over the phone by accident.
Staff and calendars are read at call time
Who works there, which locations, which calendars. All of it pulled live, and there is no second copy of your team list for you to keep in step with the first.
A long menu gets handled, not recited
Spoken lists are capped rather than read whole, so a shop with dozens of services offers the caller a usable handful to narrow down from. This exists because an early call read seventy-four services out loud.
And it knows who is calling before they say so
A returning caller is looked up by the number they are ringing from. If there is a match, the assistant greets them by name rather than asking for it. What else it knows depends entirely on which calendar you are on.
Square Appointments
Name, the last service they had and when, their next appointment, and whether there is a card on file. A card on file changes exactly one thing: the assistant can take the booking without asking for payment details.
Acuity Scheduling
Name only. The lookup leaves history out on purpose so the greeting is not held up. Acuity does two things Square does not: it offers to reuse the email already on the account instead of asking for one, and it can tell a caller what is left on their package.
Where it stops
It will not put a returning caller back with the person they saw last time. Staff selection is neutral on both integrations, and the caller picks. There are no notes, tags or VIP flags behind the scenes either. Recognition is the greeting and the booking details, and that is the whole of it.
Booking depth
Square and Acuity are not the same product, so the assistant is not either
Both integrations do the core job, and for most calls you would not be able to tell them apart. Past the core they diverge, and it is worth knowing which side you are on before you connect a calendar.
Both integrations do all of this
- Read real availability
- Find the next open slot
- Book an appointment
- Reschedule an appointment
- Cancel an appointment
- Look up an existing booking
- List your services
- List your staff
- Book across multiple staff
- Work across multiple locations
Only Square Appointments
- Group and couples booking
- Two or more people in one call, each with their own service, their own phone number and a different staff member. It checks the whole arrangement is possible before it books any of it.
- Several services in one appointment
- One person, one visit, more than one service on the ticket.
- Deposits through a real Square invoice
- The assistant creates and publishes an actual invoice and texts the caller the link. Square itself sends nothing; the text comes from Voka.
- Returning callers with their history
- Name, last service and date, next appointment, and card-on-file status.
Only Acuity Scheduling
- Intake forms
- Real form fields, filled on the call. If a required field is missing, it will not push the booking through.
- Classes and series
- Capacity is respected, and a full class is declined gracefully rather than double-booked.
- Packages and memberships
- Redeemed automatically at the point of booking, oldest expiry first.
- Add-ons and extras
- Attached to the booking during the call.
- A stricter identity check
- It refuses to cancel or reschedule unless the call is coming from a verified number, and it ignores an email a caller reads out.
- Deposits differ in kind, not just in polish
- Square produces a genuine invoice and the assistant texts the link. Acuity returns a pre-filled booking link that does not book anything on its own. The caller finishes it online. Neither one reads a card number over the phone.
- Two callers, one slot
- Both integrations hold a lock on a slot while a booking completes, and both guard against the same booking being submitted twice. Square goes one further: if it loses the race for a slot, it re-queries and offers what is still open instead of failing the call.
Where it stops
Acuity’s returning-caller recognition is name only, so do not expect the history Square gives you. And neither integration can send an email or pull up a past invoice or receipt. If a caller wants a copy of something, that still comes from you.
Callback requests
When a caller asks you to ring them back, you find out with their number ready to tap
After the call ends, the transcript is analysed and one question is put to it: did this caller actually ask to be called back? If the answer is yes, it becomes a callback request. There is no menu to sit through and nothing for the caller to press.
- What actually lands in your inbox
- The caller’s name, a tap-to-dial link, and one sentence on what they wanted. Not a transcript to scroll through at a red light.
- A queue, not just an email
- Callback requests collect in a Call Backs work queue in the dashboard, with their own priority tab on the notification bell. Nothing depends on you finding that email again three hours later.
- Email always; text if you have SMS
- The email goes out every time. The text-message version needs the SMS add-on on your account.
Where it stops
You have to switch it on. Callback alerts are opt-in: until you set your notification preferences, nothing is sent to anyone. It is not on by default, and a business that never opens that screen will never get an email.
Service area
Tell it the towns you cover, and it knows your service area
Set your centre point and a radius between five and a hundred miles. Voka geocodes it into a list of the towns inside that circle and writes the list into the assistant’s instructions when you save, so it can tell a caller in plain language whether they are somewhere you go.
- You do not type out thirty town names
- The radius generates them, and you can read back exactly what the assistant was told before you save it.
- Built for work that happens at the caller’s address
- Mobile grooming, in-home massage, on-site repair — anywhere the first real question is whether you come out that far.
Where it stops
This is prompt text, not a gate. Nothing measures the distance to a caller’s address and refuses. Voka will not automatically turn an out-of-area caller away, will not quietly file them as an out-of-area lead, and will not transfer them elsewhere. It knows your area and can say so, and that is the extent of it. There is no setting that makes it decline firmly, and the geocoding covers US addresses only.
After the call
Every call comes back as something you can read
A recording, a transcript and an AI summary, on every call, in one dashboard. That part is not an add-on and not something you configure. Every plan includes it.
- The summary is automatic
- Every call is summarised without you setting anything up or asking for it.
- Insights are questions you write yourself
- Past the summary, you write a plain-English question and have it answered about every call — did they mention a competitor, was this about a wedding, is this a new customer. Your question, your wording, one answer per call.
- Sentiment is one of those, not a default
- Whether a caller sounded happy is a question you choose to add. It does not appear on every call on its own.
- Callback detection runs on the same machinery
- The callback request described above is one of these questions, attached to your account for you rather than written by you.
Where it stops
All of this happens after the call, not during it. The analysis runs on the finished transcript, so an insight can tell you something about a call but cannot change how that call was handled.
What people ask before they connect a calendar
- What does Voka AI actually do on a call?
- It answers the phone 24/7 in natural conversation, and it books, reschedules and cancels appointments in your real Square Appointments or Acuity Scheduling calendar while the caller is still on the line. It answers questions about your services and prices from your live catalog, transfers to a person when a call needs one, and returns every call to you as a recording, a transcript and an AI summary.
- Does Voka AI know my prices?
- Yes, and it reads them fresh on every call rather than from a copy. The assistant pulls your service names, prices and durations from Square Appointments or Acuity Scheduling at the time of the call, so a price you change in the morning is the price it quotes in the afternoon. There is nothing to retrain and no separate list of services to maintain. Services you have withdrawn, and anything marked admin-only, are filtered out.
- Does Voka AI work the same way with Square Appointments and Acuity Scheduling?
- Not identically. Both read availability, find the next open slot, book, reschedule, cancel, look up an existing appointment, and handle multiple staff and multiple locations. Only Square does group and couples booking, several services in one appointment, deposits through a real invoice, and returning-caller recognition that includes history. Only Acuity does intake forms that block a booking when a required field is missing, classes and series with capacity handling, packages and memberships redeemed at booking, add-ons, and a stricter identity check on cancellations.
- Can Voka AI take a deposit over the phone?
- It never reads a card number over the phone. On Square it creates a real invoice and texts the caller the payment link. On Acuity it texts a pre-filled booking link, which the caller completes online. That link does not book anything by itself. Square does not send the message; the text comes from Voka.
- Will Voka AI book a returning caller with the same provider they saw last time?
- No. Staff selection is neutral, and the caller chooses who they want. Recognition means the assistant greets a returning caller by name instead of asking for it, and on Square it also knows their last service, their next appointment and whether a card is on file. It does not route anyone back to a particular member of staff, and there are no notes, tags or VIP flags in the background.
- Will Voka AI turn away callers outside my service area?
- No, and you should not plan around it doing so. You set a centre point and a radius, and Voka turns that into a list of towns that goes into the assistant’s instructions, so it can tell a caller whether they are somewhere you cover. Nothing measures the distance to an address and refuses a booking, captures the caller as an out-of-area lead, or transfers the call. The geocoding covers US addresses only.
- How do I find out that someone asked for a callback?
- By email, with the caller’s name, a tap-to-dial link and a one-line summary of what they wanted, plus a Call Backs work queue in the dashboard and a priority tab on the notification bell. The request comes from analysing the transcript after the call, not from the caller pressing a key. It is opt-in: until you set your notification preferences, nothing is sent.
- Do I get a recording of every call?
- Yes. Every call is recorded, transcribed and summarised by AI in one dashboard, on every plan. Beyond the summary you can write your own plain-English question and have it answered about each call. That analysis runs after the call has ended, on the finished transcript.
Acuity’s returning-caller recognition is name only, so do not expect the history Square gives you. And neither integration can send an email or pull up a past invoice or receipt. If a caller wants a copy of something, that still comes from you. See every integration.
Connect the calendar you already use
Voka reads your Square or Acuity catalog on every call, so the assistant knows what you sell, what it costs and how long it takes, without you writing any of it down twice.