Take the booking while they're still on the phone.
Callers book a real slot during the call. Keypad booking sends no audio to any AI provider. Connects to Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, or Double Menu's built-in calendar.
Phone appointment booking lets a caller choose and confirm a real time slot during the call itself, instead of leaving a message and waiting for a callback.
Can Double Menu book appointments over the phone?
Yes. A caller can book a real appointment during the call, in two ways: a keypad branch, where they hear the free times and press a key — no speech recognition is involved — or an AI branch, where they say what suits them. Both read your free times from the same calendar and write the appointment straight into it. Booking is available on the Smart and Multi plans.
What changes when the phone books for you
No callback tag, no voicemail, no “we'll ring you back”. The caller hears real free times and takes one. The appointment is in your calendar before they hang up.
The times it offers come from your own calendar and your own opening hours, so a 21:40 caller gets a genuine slot and a confirmation text — not a promise someone has to honour in the morning.
The moment a caller picks a time, that slot is reserved, so a second caller on another line cannot take it mid-conversation. If a call drops before it completes, the reservation expires on its own and the time goes back into circulation.
Appointment length, how far apart slots sit, how many you offer, how much notice you need, how far ahead people can book. The keypad branch and the AI branch run on the same rules, so switching one on does not create a second set of behaviour to police.
The two ways to book
The caller hears the free times and presses a key. There is no speech recognition anywhere in this path. Every word they hear was turned into audio when you published the menu, so nothing the caller says is streamed to an AI provider, recorded, or transcribed. The only things processed are the key they pressed, their phone number and the time they chose — because that is what the confirmation text needs.
The caller says what suits them and the AI branch works it out — “Tuesday afternoon”, “as early as possible next week”. This path does send the caller's speech to an AI provider, which is why it is a branch you switch on deliberately rather than a default. AI is off by default on every plan.
These are entitled separately in the product — a plan can have keypad booking without AI branches.
Worked call flow
- Press1Press 1
To book an appointment, press 1.
- Press2Hear real times
The next available times are: Tuesday at 2, Tuesday at 4, Wednesday at 10. Press 1, 2 or 3.
- Press3Press to take one
The caller presses 2. That slot is reserved immediately.
- Press4Confirmation
The appointment is written into the calendar and the caller gets a text.
Calendars you can connect
No external calendar or third parties. Appointments are stored in your Double Menu account. Customers receive a confirmation text, but no calendar invitation.
Connect in a browser. Double Menu reads your free/busy times and writes the appointment into your primary calendar.
Connect in a browser. Works with a work, school or personal Microsoft account, and needs only your own consent — not your IT administrator's.
These are on our roadmap. We are not giving dates, and nothing on this list is available today — if one of them is what stands between you and using Double Menu, tell us and it moves up.
Not on our roadmap today: Boulevard, Square Appointments, Vagaro. If your business runs on one of these, tell us — that is how the list above got written.
What we ask your calendar for
Free/busy is the important line. When Double Menu works out which times to offer, what it receives back from Google is a list of busy intervals — times, not titles, not attendees, not notes. It never needs to know what your Tuesday afternoon is, only that it is taken. For Microsoft we ask for permission over the calendar of the account that connects, and deliberately not the organisation-wide version, which would need an IT administrator to approve it and would grant access to everybody's calendar. A single-location business owner can connect their own calendar without involving anyone. Your access tokens are encrypted at rest. Disconnect a calendar and Double Menu stops reading it immediately.
Your calendar stays yours
Double Menu writes appointments into your calendar, and then treats what you do next as yours. Rename an event and it stops touching it — the assumption is you renamed it for a reason. Add your own notes to an event's description and they are kept exactly as you wrote them; anything Double Menu adds goes into its own clearly marked section below yours. If a caller later fills in their details, that updates our section and leaves yours untouched. Cancel an appointment in Double Menu and the slot frees immediately, whether or not your calendar provider is reachable at that moment.
What happens to the caller's details
After a booking, the caller can get a link to add their name and a note — the things that are tedious to spell out over a keypad. That link is a single-use secret: only a hashed version is stored, so nobody reading the database, or a leaked backup, can open anyone's form. Issuing a new link invalidates the old one. The link expires, and a scheduled job clears both the link and its expiry once the appointment is in the past. The confirmation text itself needs the caller's number and the time they chose, because that is what it is for. For where all of this is hosted and which companies are involved, see Security & data.
How it compares
“Not documented publicly” describes what a vendor publishes, not what their product can do. Both may do more than they document; we only compare what can be checked.
SourcesLast checked: 2026-07-25
- [1]Double Menu — Appointment booking — the two booking modes, the calendars we connect to, and the permissions we request. https://doublemenu.ai/booking
- [2]Double Menu — Pricing and plans — plan matrix, limits and top-up rates. https://doublemenu.ai/pricing
- [3]Goodcall — Integrating Boulevard for AI-powered appointments. https://help.goodcall.com/en/articles/11372295-integrating-boulevard-for-ai-powered-appointments
- [4]Goodcall — Google Calendar: Enhancing Business Efficiency with Goodcall Integration. https://www.goodcall.com/business-productivity-ai/googlecalendar
- [5]Aircall — Aircall for Developers — Synchronize agent availability with your Google Calendar. https://developer.aircall.io/tutorials/synchronize-agent-availability-with-google-calendar/
- [6]Aircall — AI Voice Agent — take routine calls off your team's to-do list. https://aircall.io/products/ai/voice-agent/
- [7]Rosie — Rosie Can Now Book Appointments Directly Into Your Calendar — No Links, No Friction. https://heyrosie.com/blog/rosie-can-book-appointments-directly-into-your-calendar
Booking is on the Smart and Multi plans
Keypad booking and AI-branch booking are entitled separately.
See pricingFrequently asked questions
No. Keypad booking takes a keypress and sends no audio to any AI provider. It is the default way to book.
Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 / Outlook, or Double Menu's built-in calendar. Calendly, Acuity, SimplyBook.me and Cal.com are on the roadmap without dates.
No. It receives busy start and end times, not event contents.
No — the permission we request needs only your own consent.
The slot is reserved the moment a caller takes it, so a simultaneous caller cannot be offered it. An abandoned reservation expires and returns the time.
Use the built-in one. Note it does not email the customer a calendar invitation — they get the confirmation text.
Booking stops reading it immediately. Existing appointments stay in your Double Menu records.