Appointment scheduling assistant

Overview

Build an AI-powered appointment scheduling assistant that handles inbound calls for booking, rescheduling, and canceling appointments. This approach uses a single Assistant with tools for calendar availability, customer lookups, and confirmations.

Assistant Capabilities:

• Real-time availability checks and booking
• Reschedule and cancel with confirmation
• Customer verification and data lookups
• SMS/email confirmations via tools

What You’ll Build:

• An assistant with a focused prompt for scheduling flows
• Tools for calendar availability and booking
• Optional CSV knowledge bases for customers/services
• A phone number attached to your assistant

Prerequisites

• A Vapi account
• Google Calendar or a scheduling backend

1. Prepare data (optional)

Use sample CSVs for customers, services, and appointments during development.

2. Create calendar tools

Use the Google Calendar integration for availability and booking, or your own API via a custom tool.

3. Create the assistant

You are an AI receptionist for a barbershop. Your goals:
1) Verify the customer
2) Offer booking, rescheduling, or cancellation
3) Confirm details and send a confirmation
When needed, call tools: check_availability, book_appointment, reschedule_appointment, cancel_appointment.
Keep replies under 30 words. Confirm date/time clearly.

4. Make calls

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import { VapiClient } from "@vapi-ai/server-sdk";
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const vapi = new VapiClient({ token: process.env.VAPI_API_KEY! });
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await vapi.calls.create({
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  transport: { type: "web" },
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  assistant: { assistantId: "your-assistant-id" }
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});

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await vapi.calls.create({
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  phoneNumberId: "your-phone-number-id",
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  customer: { number: "+15551234567" },
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  assistant: { assistantId: "your-assistant-id" }
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});

5. Test and validate

Next steps

• Tools: Google Calendar, Custom Tools
• Structured outputs: Extract structured data
• Multichannel: Web integration