Question one: what does it do without you
The first thing to figure out: does the bot follow a fixed script (service, time, contact details), or can it answer open questions from your own knowledge base. A booking bot (from $190 plus $9.90 a month ($490 plus $39 in Dubai, Europe and the US)) walks the client through the salon's schedule: service, master, free slot, reminder. A simple scripted bot (from $600) collects requests: name, phone, what's needed. If clients often ask non-standard questions (the price of a specific procedure, what's included, whether a particular master is free on a given day), you need a bot with a knowledge base (from $250 for one built from your documents and price lists) that answers precisely instead of guessing.
Question two: where does the request go
Some bots simply forward the request to a chat, and someone then copies it into a spreadsheet or CRM by hand. That works fine while the volume is low. Once it's ten or twenty requests a day, manual copying starts eating time and causing mistakes: someone forgets to log one, someone mixes up a time slot. A bot with CRM integration (from $1,500) creates a client card directly in amoCRM, 1C or another system, with no manual transfer involved.
It's worth asking upfront whether the bot works with the CRM already in use, or whether that integration has to be built separately.
Question three: what happens when it breaks
Bots, like any other service, need occasional attention: a messaging API changes, a price list gets updated, a script needs adjusting for a new service. It's worth knowing in advance who handles that after launch: a one-off handover "as is", or monthly support (from $150/mo) that covers keeping the bot alive and making edits on request. In our booking bot the salon handles day-to-day changes (masters, hours, days off, services) itself in the admin menu, and hands-on edits from us are $49.
Without support, even a small change (a new line of text, an added service) turns into a separate project with a new search for someone to do it. Support solves that in advance: the bot stays maintained instead of quietly breaking a few months in.
Why these questions matter in the first place
Comparing bots by price is the easy part, but price alone says nothing about what the bot actually does or how it fits into the business. Two bots priced the same can cover completely different jobs: one just forwards a message to a chat, the other walks the client through a script and logs the result into a CRM by itself. The three questions above shift the conversation from "how much does it cost" to "what do I actually get after launch", and that's the part that decides whether a bot really takes work off the front desk or just becomes one more channel someone has to watch manually.
A bonus question: who writes the script
It's also worth asking who actually writes the bot's wording: the questions it asks, the tone of its replies, what it says when it doesn't understand a request. A generic template "for any business" tends to sound the same everywhere and doesn't account for the fact that a salon has three masters instead of one, or that part of the services need prepayment. A script built around a specific business answers more precisely and asks the client to repeat themselves less often.
The short version
Three questions, script or knowledge base, where the request ends up, who maintains it after launch, usually make it clear which bot fits a given business: a simple scripted one to start, or one with integrations once the request volume and CRM are already serious.
See the studio's demo bots in the library or talk through a bot for your business.