The difference between a chatbot and a booking agent is one word: real. Offering times that are not free, or taking a booking that never reaches the diary, is worse than not answering — it produces a customer who turns up.
What it handles
- Booking. Reads genuine open slots from your calendar, offers them, books the one they choose, and sends the confirmation.
- Availability questions. “Do you have anything Saturday morning?” answered from the diary rather than from a guess.
- Enquiries that are not bookings yet. Captures a name and number and writes the contact straight to your CRM.
- Out of hours. Either takes the details and tells them when the team replies, or sends a line you wrote, verbatim — your choice.
- Knowing when to stop. A complaint, a refund or anything it cannot resolve goes to a person with the thread attached.
What it connects to
Google Calendar for availability and booking. HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Salesforce, GoHighLevel and Mailchimp for the contacts it captures, and ClickUp when an escalation should open a ticket.
Where it earns its keep
Not in the daytime. In the evening, at the weekend, and during the hour your phone is in a treatment room — which is when a good proportion of enquiries arrive and when a competitor who answers is the one who gets the booking.
What it will not do
It does not take a deposit or a payment. If you need one before a slot is held, it can send a link and the payment happens on your own page.
It does not decide anything clinical, legal or contractual. Those are escalation triggers you switch on, and they hand over rather than answer.
And it books only what your calendar says is free. If your diary is not the real source of truth — if half the bookings live in a notebook — the agent will confidently offer a slot that is taken. That is a process problem, and no tool fixes it.
Questions
Which calendar does it use?
Google Calendar. It reads genuine free slots, books the one the customer picks, and sends a confirmation. Outlook and Microsoft 365 are not connected yet.
What happens outside opening hours?
Your choice. It can take their name and what they need and tell them the team replies during business hours, or send a line you wrote word for word and keep helping where it can.
Can it take a deposit?
Not inside the chat. It can send a payment link and the payment happens on your own page. Card details never reach Thredo.
What if my diary is not up to date?
Then it will offer a slot that is already taken. The agent books from what the calendar says is free, so the calendar has to be the real source of truth before the booking ability is worth switching on.