Switchly Is Open: Czechia and the USA, From Today

Today Switchly is open for business. If you run a barbershop, a salon, a clinic, a tyre shop, a massage studio, anything people book by phone, you can sign up right now, get a phone number, and let Switchly answer your calls. In the Czech Republic, where we are from, and in the United States.

It took us about a year. This post is what we built, why, and how you start.

Why a phone receptionist

The idea started with a parcel box. Twenty minutes before a meeting I went to pick up a package from a big electronics chain’s pickup box. The box said “nothing here.” Three times. I called support and got a phone menu that routed me in circles and hung up. The package was in a second box across the parking garage; nobody had told me. A phone line that asked “which location are you at?” would have solved it in ten seconds.

If a huge company answers the phone that badly, imagine a two-chair barbershop. The owner has clippers in hand, the phone rings, and the booking goes to whoever picks up. Every missed call is a customer who wanted you at the exact moment they called.

I had built chatbots before, so I knew how high the bar is for something that ships to real customers. We did not want a demo. We wanted a receptionist a business could leave alone.

What Switchly does

It answers the phone, every time. Your business gets a Switchly number, or you forward your existing line to it. The receptionist picks up on the first ring, introduces your business, and asks what the caller needs. Czech, English, Spanish or German, in whichever language the caller speaks. Or jump from one language to another, it will follow.

It books, moves and cancels. It knows your services, prices, opening hours, breaks and time off. It offers only times that are really free, books the appointment, and texts the customer a confirmation with a Secure ID. Call back with that ID and you can move or cancel without a login, a form, or a human. A customer who moves an appointment three times is not difficult. They are busy. Switchly treats that as normal.

It tells you. Every booking, change and cancellation lands in your calendar and in a text to your phone. You learn about the 2 pm booking from your calendar, not from a voicemail from the night before.

You see every call. The dashboard keeps the recording, the transcript and the outcome of every call: booked, changed, cancelled, handed to you, or something else. We tested 40 calls at the same time and it handled them.

It knows when to stop. If a caller asks for something it can’t help with “I forgot my wallet at your business”, it says so and transfers the call to you. No invented prices, no invented business info, no “helpful” guesses. Reliability in voice AI is not about being clever. It is about being tight.

More than a phone line

The receptionist is the heart of it. Around it there is a full booking system, because once the phone works, owners asked for the rest.

Chat on your website. The same receptionist, in a chat window. Share the link or paste one line of code into your site and a chat button appears. Customers ask about prices and hours and book, in four languages, and it lands in the same calendar.

Online booking page. Every business gets its own booking page the day it signs up, on every plan, trial included. Service, barber, time, name, done. Customers get a confirmation by text or e-mail with a calendar invite. Put the “Book an appointment” button on your site with one line of code.

Your calendar, your team. Services with prices and durations, opening hours, breaks, time off. One calendar on Starter, a calendar per barber or chair on Team, so a caller can ask for Tom and get Tom.

Google Calendar. Connect it and your own meetings block the slots. Bookings show up in Google too. If you move or delete one there, Switchly asks you in the dashboard which version counts instead of guessing.

Texts and notifications. The customer gets a confirmation and a text on every change or cancellation. You get a text the moment something is booked. Edit the wording of every message yourself. Customers who text your number back reach your inbox.

Policies and FAQ. Tell it your cancellation policy, your parking situation, whether you take cards. It answers from that, and only from that.

Insights. Every call and chat with recording, transcript, outcome and a one-line summary. Search your calls by keyword. See booked, missed and after-hours calls at a glance, export the numbers.

API. The booking engine as a REST API on the Team plan: availability, bookings, changes and cancellations from your own software, with the same confirmations going out. Ten endpoints, one key.

A few things you can try on day one

• Set your opening hours and services, then call your own number and book a haircut for tomorrow. Watch it appear in the calendar before you hang up.
• Call back and say “I need to move my appointment, I have the code.” Give the Secure ID from the text. Thirty seconds.
• Ask it something you did not teach it. Hear it say it does not know, and offer to put you through.
• Switch languages mid-call. It follows you.
• Add a time off for Friday afternoon. Call and ask for Friday at three. It offers Friday morning instead.

Who built it

Three of us, in Prague and Brno. Pepa built the engine, Emil built everything you click, I built the receptionist’s brain and talked everyones ears off about the mission. No office, no funding, evenings and weekends for a year, thousands of test calls at odd hours. We grinded it.

We answer our own support. If something feels wrong, tell us. We would rather hear it from you than guess.

Where this goes

The perfect booking is the one you never make. You think “I need to book a dental appointment” and it exists. One step removed from thinking it is saying it out loud, and that is the phone. We build the infrastructure so a person says it out loud, to a business they trust, and it lands in the calendar, and the business did nothing.

Chat won the first wave of AI because it is forgiving. Voice is the second wave, and it is unforgiving: two seconds of dead air and the caller thinks you hung up. That is why we spent the year on reliability. A receptionist that is right most of the time is a demo. A receptionist a business can leave alone is a product.

So the plan is simple. Every appointment business, in every language its customers speak, on every channel they use, with one receptionist that never misses and never pretends. Phone first, because that is where the money is. Then everywhere else. We are starting in the two countries we know best.

Where you can use it today

Czechia and the USA from today. Czech numbers, US numbers, text confirmations in both countries, pricing in crowns, dollars and euros. Mexico is next; we are working on it.

Start with 10 free calls

Sign up at dashboard.switchly.ai, tell Switchly about your business, launch. You get 10 free calls, no card needed. Setup takes about ten minutes. Then go back to your customers. We have the phone.