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Quick answer: A large share of salon and spa callers are more comfortable speaking Spanish, and a caller who reaches a greeting or voicemail they can't follow usually hangs up and tries the next place. CallPad is an AI receptionist that answers every call to your business 24/7 in English or Spanish, switches to the caller's language on its own, answers common questions from your own information, and books the appointment during the call. It texts back anyone you miss and passes clinical or complex questions to your team. It starts from US$150 / £100 / A$200 / C$190 a month per location, a flat rate with all minutes included; group pricing is custom.
By Sophie Carter, writer at CallPad. Updated 3 November 2026. CallPad makes an AI receptionist, so we have a stake in this topic.
A woman calls a nail salon on her lunch break to book a fill before the weekend. The greeting is in English, fast and full of options she doesn't quite catch. She waits for a person, gets voicemail, and hangs up without leaving a message. Twenty minutes later she books with a salon a friend recommended, the one where the person who answered switched to Spanish the moment she heard her say hola.
That call was never a hard sell. She already wanted the appointment. She just wanted to make it in the language she thinks in, and the first salon gave her no way to do that. This plays out in salons, spas and clinics every day, and it's one of the easiest kinds of lost booking to fix.
More than 40 million people in the United States speak Spanish at home, far more than any language other than English. In the Census Bureau's most recent count, Spanish made up 61.1% of everyone who speaks a language other than English at home (U.S. Census Bureau). It isn't a niche. In a lot of neighborhoods it's the first language of a big share of the people who walk past your door.
Speaking Spanish at home doesn't mean someone can't speak English. Most can. But comfort and fluency aren't the same thing. The Migration Policy Institute counts more than 25 million US residents as limited English proficient, meaning they report speaking English less than very well (Migration Policy Institute). For a lot of those callers, a quick, friendly booking in Spanish is the difference between an easy yes and a call that stalls.
Even among Latinos who are fully bilingual, Spanish stays close. Pew Research Center found that about 75% of US Latino adults can carry on a conversation in Spanish, and roughly two-thirds still speak it at home (Pew Research Center). Plenty of your bilingual clients will happily book in English. The point is that a good number would rather not have to.
People buy in the language they live in. In a study of nearly 9,000 shoppers across 29 countries, CSA Research found that 76% prefer to buy products with information in their own language, and 40% said they won't buy at all from a business that only uses another language (CSA Research). A salon booking is a small, personal purchase, so the same instinct holds. If the call feels like hard work, the caller stops.
Voicemail doesn't rescue those calls. Most people won't leave a message even in their first language. One study of small-business calls found 69% of callers who reached voicemail hung up rather than leave one (Moneypenny). Ask someone to leave a careful message in a language they're less sure of and the odds drop further. They would rather just try the next salon.
The hard part is that you never see it happen. A missed English call at least leaves a number you might recognize. A Spanish-speaking caller who gives up leaves nothing, so you have no way of knowing a ready-to-book client was ever on the line.
This is a group that spends on exactly what you sell. There are more than 62 million Hispanics in the US, with an estimated $2.4 trillion in buying power, up 87% in the past decade (NielsenIQ). And they spend above their share on beauty specifically: NielsenIQ found Hispanic shoppers make up 14.4% of beauty-buying households but account for 16.6% of all beauty dollars, outspending other shoppers in categories like hair care, cosmetics and fragrance.
The appetite for self-care is there too. In the same research, 37% of Hispanic consumers said it's important to pamper themselves regularly, against 26% of everyone else (NielsenIQ). These are people who want the facial, the color, the lash fill. When your phone turns one of them away, you aren't losing a single booking. You're losing a client who would have rebooked.
CallPad answers every call to your salon, around the clock, and it doesn't make the caller pick a language from a menu. It listens, hears that someone is speaking Spanish, and carries on in Spanish. If the caller switches back to English, so does CallPad. The client never has to ask whether this is possible or press 2 for anything.
From there it does the ordinary front-desk job in whichever language the caller chose. It answers the questions people ask before they commit, like what a service costs, how long it takes, whether you have anything this weekend and where you are, all from your own information. Then it books the appointment into your calendar during the call, not as a message for someone to sort out later.
When a question needs a person, CallPad doesn't guess. It passes anything clinical or complicated to your team, by transferring the call or taking a message, and emails your front desk what the caller wanted. And when a call comes in that nobody can pick up, it texts the caller back, so a missed call becomes a conversation instead of a dead end.
Answering in Spanish is the start, not the whole job. A few things separate a call that feels native from one that feels translated.
Follow the caller, don't assume. Plenty of Spanish-speaking clients prefer to book in English, and plenty of English-first clients drop into Spanish for a word or two. The safe default is to take the lead from the caller on every call rather than deciding for them. Pew Research Center found most US Latinos move between both languages comfortably (Pew Research Center).
Use your real service names. Clients ask for a balayage, a rellenado or a limpieza facial in a mix of both languages. CallPad works from your actual menu and prices, so it books the service the caller means instead of the nearest word it can find.
Keep it warm. The reason someone calls instead of booking online is that they want a person. A greeting that's friendly in the caller's language sets the tone for the whole appointment, and it's the thing clients mention when they tell a friend where to go. People simply trust a business more when it meets them in their own language (CSA Research).
CallPad holds a real conversation in Spanish. It understands what the caller asks and answers from your own salon information, rather than reading a fixed recording. If the caller moves between Spanish and English, CallPad follows.
Yes. CallPad handles calls in several languages. For most US salons and spas, English and Spanish cover the large majority of callers, so those are the two it's set up for most often.
It listens to the caller and switches to the language they're speaking on its own. The caller doesn't choose from a menu or press a number.
Yes. CallPad answers questions and books the appointment into your calendar during the call, in whichever language the caller is using, working from your real service menu and prices.
It passes anything clinical or complicated to your team by transferring the call or taking a message, and emails your front desk what the caller wanted.
CallPad books into systems including Mindbody, Booker, Zenoti, Square Appointments, GlossGenius, Setmore, Zoho Bookings, Phorest, SalonIQ, Cliniko and Google Calendar. If your system isn't connected yet, contact us and join the waitlist.
CallPad starts from US$150 / £100 / A$200 / C$190 a month per location. It's a flat rate with all minutes included, and group pricing is custom.
About 10 minutes. You keep your existing number by forwarding it to CallPad.
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