The phone was switched off to protect the chair
Hair by TMS is a dreadlocks (locs) and lifestyle brand built around Afro-centric and textured hair, with dreadlocks the thing it is best known for, alongside haircuts, grooming and bridal styling. Tochi started the business in Nigeria close to a decade ago. He now runs three locations there plus studios in Ghana and Berlin, and this is its second year registered in the UK. The UK studio is currently based in Luton, with a move to London planned before the year is out.
Tochi still styles clients himself, and that is where the phone became a problem. Calls landed mid-appointment, and stopping to answer one means the client in the chair waits. Sorting the genuine booking enquiries from the people who simply wanted a chat took more of his time again. So he closed the phone channel altogether: no direct calls, virtual consultation only.
Found on Instagram, chosen for the foundation
Cyberstaff arrived as an ad on Tochi's Instagram feed, and the fit was immediate. He is building the UK arm from scratch, and his priority is getting the foundation right: automate the admin first, then hire people for the work that genuinely needs a person, rather than spending on headcount to answer a phone.
Setup was simple for Tochi. He went through the services and keywords and switched it on, all in one sitting. No developer, no support ticket.
The line is open again
The AI Receptionist now answers every inbound call, at any hour, and can take more than one at a time. It works from the website, answers questions about services and sends callers a booking link. Volume runs at 20 to 30 calls a month, which sounds modest until you remember these are calls the business could not take at all before.
Tochi reviews the calls at the end of the day and picks up the ones worth following. His estimate is an hour a week, so several hours of founder time returned every month, and the headline benefit is simply efficiency: more than one thing happening at once, and each of them done properly.
Delegation is how the brand scaled
Ask Tochi what made a single Nigerian studio into a group across four countries and the answer is delegation. Stylists, managers, an operations head, HR: the Nigerian business runs without him in the middle of it, and he is building the UK to the same pattern, with the AI Receptionist holding the phone from day one.
His clientele is international, so accents were an open question. In practice Cyberstaff picks them up well and takes note of the language a caller is using. Tochi also finds that clients who see AI in place read it as a sign of a serious operation.
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