The plain-English service matcher lives on your shop's public booking page, in the service-picking step — a "Not sure which one?" helper that sits above your regular service menu (it only shows up once a shop has more than two bookable services). A customer types what they want in their own words, and the AI reads that against your active, bookable service list and hands back up to three suggested services, each with a confidence level and a short reason. Nothing is booked, held, or charged at this step — the customer still has to choose one of the suggestions (or ignore them and pick from the menu directly) and complete the rest of booking themselves: picking an installer, a time slot, and entering their own contact info.
Using the helper
A customer describes their situation in their own words — something like "just bought a Tesla Model Y and want the darkest legal tint all around" — and either clicks the button or hits Enter to run the match. The description needs at least a few characters before the button will let them submit — plenty of room for a full sentence or two describing the vehicle and what they want done.
Results come back as up to three clickable cards, each showing the matched service's name, a confidence badge (high, medium, or low, color-coded on the card), a short one-line reason for the pick, and its duration and price (unless the shop has pricing hidden on the booking page). If the description was too vague to match confidently — "tint" on its own, for example — the response can also include a short follow-up question shown underneath the cards, meant to help the customer narrow things down rather than have the tool guess wrong with false confidence.
After a match
Clicking one of the suggested cards selects that service and carries the customer straight into the normal booking flow from there — the same installer-and-time-slot steps they'd hit if they'd picked that service off the plain menu instead. The matcher itself never advances past service selection or takes any other action on its own; its only job is narrowing down which service fits. Every suggestion is also checked against your shop's real, currently active service list before it's shown, so it can't recommend something you don't actually offer or have since turned off — and if you've limited which services are bookable online in your booking policy, matching only ever draws from that same limited list.
Things to know
- Plan requirement: Real AI-powered matching requires the shop to be on the Growth plan or higher (Growth, Professional, HQ, or Enterprise) — it's grouped with SalesThumb's other AI booking/messaging tools, isn't included on Starter, and isn't offered as a standalone add-on. The helper itself can still appear on a lower-plan shop's booking page — whether it shows up is controlled by service count (below), not by plan — it just always runs in the same keyword-fallback mode described next, the same as a shop with no AI key configured.
- Stub mode: Any time a live AI call doesn't happen — no ANTHROPIC_API_KEY configured in the shop's environment, the shop's plan doesn't include this feature, or the shop is over its plan's AI usage limit for the period — matching falls back to comparing words in the customer's description against each service's name, description, and category: a straightforward keyword match rather than a real AI read of the request. If nothing in the description overlaps with anything in your menu, it falls back further to simply offering your first bookable service as a low-confidence "best guess." Nothing on the booking page itself tells the customer which mode produced their result.
- Online booking has to be turned on: if a shop has public online booking disabled in its booking policy, this — like the rest of the public booking page — won't run.
- Built-in abuse protection: because each match can trigger a real AI call, the endpoint is rate-limited; a burst of rapid, repeated submissions in a short window will return a "too many requests" message instead of continuing to match.
- Only shows up with a real menu to search: the helper is hidden entirely for shops with two or fewer bookable services — the plain menu is already simple enough at that size.
- It's optional, not a gate: nothing about this tool blocks a customer from skipping it and picking a service straight off the menu instead.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Does this actually book the appointment for the customer?
A: No. It only suggests which service fits their description — the customer still has to pick one (or use the regular menu instead) and complete the rest of booking themselves, including choosing a time and entering their own details.
Q: What plan do we need for this to show up?
A: Growth or higher — Growth, Professional, HQ, or Enterprise — for real AI-powered matching. It's not included on the Starter plan and isn't sold separately as an add-on. The helper itself can still appear on a lower plan (that's controlled by how many bookable services the shop has, not the plan) — it just runs the same keyword-based fallback described below instead of a live AI read.
Q: What happens if we haven't set up the AI key yet?
A: Matching falls back to comparing words in the customer's description against each service's name, description, and category — it still returns a usable suggestion, just not a real AI read of the request. The same fallback also kicks in if the shop's plan doesn't include real AI matching, or if the shop is over its AI usage limit for the period. There's no indicator on the booking page itself telling the customer which mode they got.
Q: Can it suggest a service we don't actually offer, or one we've deactivated?
A: No. Every suggestion is checked against your shop's real, currently active, bookable service list before it's ever shown — anything that doesn't match a real service gets dropped.
Q: Why don't we see this helper on our booking page?
A: A couple of possible reasons: your shop has two or fewer bookable services (it only shows with more than that), or public online booking is turned off in your booking policy. Your plan doesn't affect whether the helper appears on the page — only whether it uses real AI matching or the keyword-based fallback.
Q: What if the customer's description is too vague to match well?
A: The tool can include a short follow-up question along with its best guesses, aimed at narrowing the choice down — rather than confidently picking the wrong one.