AI Receptionist for Dental Offices
Dental practices miss calls for a structural reason: the person who answers the phone is also checking patients in. Those missed calls are mostly bookings, which means they are revenue that went to another practice.
Discuss your projectClinical urgency comes first, on every call
Before any booking logic, the agent is built to recognise and escalate clinical urgency. Facial swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing, trauma to the mouth, uncontrolled bleeding, severe pain — these are matched first, ahead of everything else, and route straight to a person or to your out-of-hours number.
The agent gives no clinical advice at all. If a caller describes symptoms, it says it cannot advise on symptoms, establishes whether this needs to be seen urgently using the criteria your clinical lead has defined, and gets them to someone. It does not reassure, it does not suggest painkillers, and it does not decide that something can wait until Tuesday.
Out of hours this matters most, because that is when the agent is working alone. It gives your emergency instructions clearly, states when the practice opens, and does not keep the caller in conversation. The failure mode worth designing against is an automated system that sounds competent and calm to someone who should be in a chair within the hour.
The escalation list is written with your clinical lead and reviewed, rather than drafted by us from general knowledge. That is a short meeting and it is the most important input to the build.
What it handles on a call
Booking and rescheduling
Against real availability by appointment type and clinician, including the duration and buffer rules your diary actually uses. Written into your practice software.
New patient enquiries
Whether you are accepting patients, what the first visit involves, what it costs — then booking them. Commercially the highest-value call type you currently miss.
Cancellations
Taken and the slot released immediately, so it can be offered to someone else. The gap that costs a practice most is the one nobody knew about.
Cost and plan questions
Your published fees, payment plans and which insurance you accept, from content you control.
Practical questions
Hours, location, parking, accessibility, what to bring. Simple, high volume, and a poor use of your front desk's attention.
Messages for the clinical team
Structured and recorded against the patient where identified, rather than a voicemail someone has to listen to and transcribe.
Transfer on request
Immediately, with no attempt to handle it first, whenever the caller asks for a person.
Practical fit with a dental practice
- Practice software integration — Dentally, SOE/Exact, Dentrix, Open Dental, Carestream — where an API exists. We check yours specifically rather than promising integration generically, because coverage varies widely in this sector.
- Your existing number forwarded, so nothing changes on your signage, website or patient letters, and the forward can be removed in minutes.
- Names and dates confirmed back on every call. Mishearing a surname or a date is the realistic failure of voice, so it is checked rather than assumed, and uncertain spellings are read back letter by letter.
- Recall and reactivation calls as a separate piece of scope — patients overdue for a check-up, called with a bookable slot. Usually worth more than inbound handling, with its own consent considerations.
- Patient conversations treated as health data: in the US that means BAAs across the processing path, and in the UK and Europe GDPR special-category handling. This shapes the design and we raise it at scoping.
- Recordings and transcripts in your own account, with retention set to your policy.
Common questions
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