Talkify / Integrations / Front Counter
New · Front Counter

The phone rings. It lands on your screen.

Your agent answers, takes the booking or the order, and it appears on a tablet by your till while the caller is still talking. Someone taps it when it is done, and the customer gets a message to say so. For the busy places that have decided a proper booking system costs more than it saves.

$59 a month on top of your Talkify agent. No setup fee, no lock in, and nothing to install on the tablet.

From
$59/mo
Setup fee
$0
Staff logins
None
Screens
As many

The board on a counter tablet. An order waiting 19 minutes turns amber on its own.

Bookings on the screen Orders at the counter Tap it when it is done The customer gets a message Nothing written on a pad Your phone agent

Written on a docket pad, or not at all.

The phone goes at ten past seven. Someone wipes their hands, takes a booking on the back of a receipt, and puts it somewhere. Half the time nobody rings back, the order is short a side, or the table for six turns up to a room that is full. Not because anyone is careless, but because the person answering was already busy doing something else.

It fills in as they talk.

The ticket appears the moment your agent has a name, then keeps updating while the call is still going. The kitchen can start on a big order before the caller has hung up.

Nothing gets lost.

If the call drops, whatever was already captured stays, and the rest is recovered from the recording as soon as it ends. No pad, no scrap of paper, no forgetting who it was for.

Read it across the room.

Big type on dark, laid out like a docket. Party sizes and pickup times are the largest things on the slip because they are what you actually read.

Allergies in red.

Allergies and access needs get their own red band, never buried in a note. The agent is told to put them there and nowhere else.

Nobody logs in.

One private link, one four digit PIN, once per device. No app to install and no session to expire in the middle of service.

How it works

Answer. Appear. Clear.

  • Your agent answers the phone. The same agent you already have. You tick what it should take: bookings, orders, or something you name yourself.
  • The ticket lands on the screen. While the caller is still talking. It updates as the agent learns the party size, the time, the order, the allergy.
  • Someone taps it when it is done. And the customer gets a message to say the table is confirmed or the food is ready, in your wording, in one tap.
Booking 0149
Aroha Whitiora
Party
6
When
7:30 pm
Phone
027 220 8811

Tell Aroha it is confirmed?

Goes by WhatsApp if their number has it, which is free. Otherwise it goes as a text, at 10c.

Kia ora Aroha, your table at Sala Thai is confirmed for 7:30 pm. See you then.
Send and clear Just clear

One decision, not two. We work out whether WhatsApp or a text will reach them.

Bookings, orders, or whatever you call it.

Most places tick bookings, orders, or both. If neither word fits what your phone is actually taking, name the third kind yourself and write out what you want the agent to find out, one line at a time. Each line becomes a question on the call and a labelled row on the screen. There is no code and nothing to configure beyond typing it.

Bookings

Restaurants, cafes, salons, clinics

Name, how many, and when. The party size sits on the ticket as a single large number because it is the one thing that decides whether you can take it.

Orders

Takeaways, bakeries, butchers, bottle shops

The order printed like a docket, with the changes they asked for under each line. Put your menu in your agent's knowledge base and it can answer what is on it and what it costs, too.

Something else

Hire yards, workshops, repairs, trades

You name it and you write the questions. "What the job is." "The address." "Whether anyone will be on site." Three lines typed into a box, and that is the whole setup.

The board works the service, not just the phone.

Taking the call is half of it. The other half is a Friday night: something runs out, the kitchen falls behind, a regular rings back to change their order, and at the end of it somebody wants to know how the day went. All of that lives on the same screen.

Run out? One tap.

Your menu sits on the board as a row of taps. Tap what has run out and the agent stops selling it from the very next call, and takes it off any order a caller tries anyway. Everything comes back at midnight on its own.

The total is the menu's.

Put your menu in once, prices and all. Every order is priced off the menu's own numbers, never worked out by ear, and the caller hears the total and their order number before they hang up.

Regulars get their usual.

The agent recognises the number, knows what they had last time, and can offer the same again. Ring back to change tonight's order and it updates the same ticket; cancelling works until the kitchen has started on it.

Accept it yourself.

Out of the box a ticket counts the moment the call ends. Prefer a human in the loop? Flip auto-accept off and every ticket waits for a tap, and accepting a booking is what confirms it and sends the message.

Dockets print themselves.

Turn on printing and every accepted ticket comes out of a standard 80mm receipt printer, order number big at the top, allergies boxed. The kitchen keeps working off paper; the paper just writes itself now.

The day, closed out.

At the end of any day the board took something, a close-out arrives by email or text: how many orders and bookings, what they came to, anything cancelled. Quiet days send nothing.

Pricing

$59 a month, on top of your agent.

No setup fee, no per-ticket charge and no lock in, so a flat-out Friday costs the same as a quiet Tuesday. Messages your staff send from the screen are 10c each and WhatsApp messages are free.

  • As many screens as you want
  • Bookings, orders and your own kind
  • Menu prices, totals and order numbers
  • Sold-out taps that reset at midnight
  • Docket printing on an 80mm printer
  • An end-of-day close-out, on us
  • Nothing to install
  • Full call transcript on every ticket

Front Counter needs an incoming Talkify agent to answer the calls: it has nothing to fill the screen with on its own. Business agents are $129/month at the founding rate for your first 3 months, then $199, including 200 minutes of calls.

Front Counter $59 per month Talk to us Or see the full price list.

Frequently asked.

The questions we hear most. If yours isn't here, ring our live demo agent on 03 242 1262, it'll either answer or queue a callback from a human.

Do I need a POS or a booking system for this?
No, and that is rather the point. Front Counter is for the places that have decided a full booking or point of sale system costs more than it saves them. All you need is your Talkify agent answering the phone and any tablet, laptop or spare screen with a browser on it. There is nothing to install, nothing to plug in and nothing to learn beyond tapping a ticket when you have dealt with it.
How does a booking get onto the screen?
Your agent puts it there while it is still on the call. As soon as it has a name it starts a ticket, and it updates the same ticket each time it learns something else, so you watch the details fill in as the customer talks. That means the kitchen can start looking at a big order, or you can glance at whether you have a table for six at half seven, before the caller has even hung up.
What happens if the call drops halfway through?
Whatever the agent had already learned stays on the screen, and the rest is recovered from the call recording the moment the call ends. Nothing is lost because the phone cut out in a tunnel. If the caller never gave a name or a number at all, the ticket is removed rather than left as a blank slip for someone to puzzle over.
Can staff let the customer know when it is ready?
Yes, in one tap when they clear the ticket. The message is already written using your wording and their name, and staff can edit it before it goes. It goes by WhatsApp when the number has WhatsApp, which is free, and as an ordinary text when it does not, at 10c. There is nothing for your staff to choose: we work out which will reach them.
We are not a restaurant. Is this any use to us?
It is used by anyone whose phone rings while they are busy with somebody in front of them. As well as bookings and orders you can name a third kind of ticket yourself, call it whatever you call it, and write out what you want the agent to find out, one line at a time. A hire yard asks for the job and the site address. A barber asks which barber and what kind of cut. A repair shop asks what the item is and whether it is under warranty.
Do staff have to log in?
No. Nobody is signing into a dashboard halfway through a Friday night service, and a session that expires at seven in the evening would be worse than no screen at all. You open a private link on the tablet once, type a four digit PIN, and it stays open. If a tablet goes missing you change the link and that device stops working.
Can I have more than one screen?
Yes. Open the same link on as many devices as you like and they all show the same board, updating together. A takeaway often puts one in the kitchen and one at the counter.
What does it cost?
$59 a month on top of your Talkify agent, with no setup fee and no lock in. Messages your staff send from the screen are 10c each, and WhatsApp messages are free. You need an incoming agent for this: Front Counter has nothing to fill the screen with on its own.
What if we take orders? Do we type our menu into Talkify?
Once, and that is it. Front Counter comes with a Menu card in the builder: paste your menu in or upload it, prices and all, and a spreadsheet with a price column works best. From there the agent answers what is on tonight, what is in a dish and what it costs, prices every order off the menu's own numbers rather than working it out itself, and finishes each order call with the total and the order number.
Do callers get an order number?
Yes. Every ticket gets a number that resets each day and counts up from wherever you say, so a shop that has always started at 100 keeps starting at 100. The agent gives the caller their number at the end of the call, so they can ask for the right bag at a busy counter.
Something runs out mid-service. What happens?
Tap it on the screen, in the same panel as the wait time, and the agent stops selling it from the very next call. If a caller asks for it anyway, the agent says it has run out tonight and offers something else, and it can never sneak onto an order. Everything you tapped comes back on its own at midnight, so nobody finds last Friday's sold-out list still running on Saturday.
A customer rings back to change or cancel their order. Can the agent handle it?
Yes. The agent recognises the number, opens the call already knowing their order and its number, and can change it on the same ticket rather than starting a second one. Cancelling works until your counter has started on it, with a few minutes' grace after the order was taken. Regulars get recognised the same way: the agent knows what they had last time and can offer the same again.
Do we have to accept every ticket, or does it just count?
Your choice. Out of the box a ticket counts the moment the call ends. Turn auto-accept off and every ticket waits for a tap: accepting an order means you are making it, and accepting a booking is what confirms it and sends the confirmation message. The switch lives on the board itself, next to the wait time, so it can change with the night.
Can it print dockets?
Yes. Turn on printing and every accepted ticket prints from the tablet, sized for a standard 80mm receipt printer, with the order number big at the top and allergies boxed so they cannot be missed. There is also a Print button on every ticket for one-offs.
How do I know what the board did today?
The close-out. At the end of any day the board took something, you get a summary by email or text: how many orders and bookings, what the orders came to, anything cancelled and how many customers were messaged. You pick the time it arrives, and quiet days send nothing.
Where does my customer data live?
Call audio, transcripts and the details on each ticket are stored in New Zealand data centres and encrypted at rest with AES-256, in line with the Privacy Act. The screen shows customer names and phone numbers, which is exactly why it is behind a private link and a PIN rather than sitting on a public web address.

Have a look around.

Everything Talkify connects to, and what each connection actually does.

The phone answered while you are serving the person in front of you.

The same agent on your website, in voice and text.