AI Voice Receptionist™
DCRM AI Voice Receptionist™
A voicemail loses new patients. This one talks to them.
After 5 rings with no answer, the AI Voice Receptionist™ picks up instead of your voicemail. She works out what the patient is calling about, texts them the right information while they are still on the phone, and saves the enquiry in your pipeline.
It is 6.42pm on a Tuesday. The practice closed at 6. She rings the next practice on the list, and you will never know she called.
An evening call ringing out at the front desk, answered by the AI Voice Receptionist™ on the sixth ring, and the price list texted during the call
The same phone. A completely different Tuesday evening.
Without an AI voice receptionist
- The phone rings out at 6.42pm and nobody knows it happened.
- Your report says 70 missed calls. It cannot say which ones mattered.
- Your team rings back a list, and the new patients have already booked elsewhere.
- Working yesterday’s callbacks is how today’s calls get missed.
- A patient who was finally ready hears a beep.
With the AI Voice Receptionist™
- The call is answered at 6.42pm, on a Saturday, and in the Monday lunch rush.
- New patient enquiries are separated from appointment changes.
- The patient already has your price list or your dentist’s video on their phone.
- Your team opens a card that says what the call was about before they dial.
- A patient who was finally ready has a conversation.
What it does
Most practices are not losing patients on price.
They are losing them to a phone that rang out.
What it replaces
Voicemail is where new patient enquiries go to die
Think about what you do when a business you have never dealt with puts you through to voicemail. You hang up. An existing patient might leave a name and a number, because they already know you. A new patient will not, because they have not committed to you yet.
So this is not a better voicemail greeting. It is the thing that answers instead of it. She picks up, has the conversation, answers the question, sends the information to their phone, and saves the enquiry.
In plain English: a voicemail records the ones who bother to speak. This one saves the ones who would have hung up.
Illustration: a voicemail the caller hangs up on, beside the AI Voice Receptionist™ keeping them on the line and sending the information.
The first rings are yours
Your front desk always goes first
The phone rings on your team’s end exactly as it always has. Only after a few rings, when nobody can get to it, does the AI Voice Receptionist™ pick up instead of your voicemail.
So it is not a robot sitting in front of your practice. It is overflow capacity. The AI and the automation cover off speed. Your team is there for the relationship and to build the trust.
Illustration: a call ringing at the front desk five times, then answered by the AI Voice Receptionist™ instead of the voicemail.
6 intents, trained on dental calls
It listens to what the patient actually wants
It is not reading a script at them. It works out the intent, and then it does 1 of 2 things.
It puts them through. Some calls should never be handled by software, and it knows which ones. Those go to a human straight away. No menu, no hold loop.
Or it sends them something, while they are still on the phone, and lets them know the team will call them back. That buys you time before they call the next practice.
Illustration: what callers ask and what the AI Voice Receptionist™ does with each: puts them through to the team, or texts them something during the call.
After they hang up
Your team knows what the call was about before they dial
The AI classifies the call first. If it was a genuine new patient enquiry, a card appears in the SmileEngine™ Pipeline with a summary of what was said and the transcript behind it.
If it was an existing patient moving a Thursday appointment, it is separated. That is what keeps your booking rate honest.
In plain English: your front desk stops spending the morning working out who rang and why, and spends it on the new patients who need a conversation.
Illustration: a call classified as a new patient opportunity, its card in the SmileEngine™ Pipeline with a summary, and the closing text sent after hours.
What most AI phone answering cannot do
It sounds like a machine
You can hear it in 3 seconds, and the caller does what you would do. They hang up and try the next practice.
Ours sounds like a person with a personality who works at your practice.
It has no empathy
A patient in pain, or one who has been putting it off for 2 years and is embarrassed, does not want “may I take your name” first.
Ours listens first.
It takes a message and stops
“I will get the team to call you back”, and then nothing until somebody picks up the phone. The patient goes cold overnight.
Ours sends the resource before they have hung up.
Something to note
The things it cannot do
It does not book into your PMS. Only if you allocate spots in the DCRM calendar can it book the appointment. In most practices the books live in the practice management system, so it captures the enquiry and hands it to your front desk team.
Some calls will not go well. On a poor line, or with a strong accent, the AI can struggle. In that case it says so, offers a callback from your team and opens an SMS thread. The contact still exists, so nothing is lost.
It will not answer clinical questions. Anything clinical goes to your team, which is where it belongs.
We would not promise you that every missed call turns into a patient, because not every practice will achieve that. What it does is answer them, filter the new patient opportunities, and give your team a chance to save some of them before they ring somebody else.
Where this sits in DCRM
The phone layer
The AI Voice Receptionist™ answers the phone. The AI Text Receptionist™ answers everything texted. They share the same SmileEngine™ Pipeline, so a call and the SMS reply that follows it are 1 enquiry, not 2.
Answer the call, capture the enquiry, hand it to a human.
- AI Voice Receptionist™Answers the callYou are here
- AI Text Receptionist™Picks up the SMS reply
- SmileEngine™ PipelineWhere the enquiry lives
- ToothTalk™ AnalyticsTells you how big the problem is
- Ms Smile™Where the team practises the callback
The proof sits on the case study pages
AI Voice Receptionist™
The call failed, so they tried the website 2 minutes later
Be honest with yourself
When this is not useful for you
If your front desk already answers every call, and you do not get calls outside business hours, then you do not need this.
And if you want an AI voice receptionist so you can stop answering the phone altogether, the technology is not quite there yet.
Where it makes sense is a practice that is investing in marketing, missing calls it cannot see, and losing the after-hours enquiries to the practice that picks up next.
Step by step
How it works
- The patient rings your practice as usual.
- After a few rings with no answer, the AI Voice Receptionist™ picks up.
- It works out the intent, then transfers the call, or sends the matching resource by SMS while the patient is still on the phone.
- It classifies the call as a new patient opportunity or an existing patient.
- If it is an opportunity, a card is created in the SmileEngine™ Pipeline, and the patient gets a closing SMS.
- Your team reads the summary, and decides whether to SMS or ring back.
Getting started
How to switch it on
That is pretty much all you have to do on your end.
You tell us what you want to call your AI Voice Receptionist™.
You send us some resources.
We do the configuration.
We run test calls together. When you approve, we go live.
We retrain her on the calls that did not go well, so she gets better over time.
FAQs
Questions we get asked
What is an AI dental phone receptionist?
An AI receptionist that answers your practice phone when your front desk cannot, works out what the patient is calling about, sends them the relevant information by SMS during the call, and creates an enquiry for your team to follow up.
Does it answer every call?
Your front desk gets the first rings. The AI only picks up after that. It also covers outside business hours, which means evenings, weekends and public holidays.
Can it book the appointment?
If you allocate spots in the DCRM calendar, yes. If your books live in your practice management system, it captures the enquiry and hands it to your team instead. Tell us which system you use and we will let you know.
Does it replace our front desk?
No. The AI and the automation are there to cover off speed and capacity. Your team is there for the relationship and to build the trust. They complement each other.
Will patients hate talking to AI?
Some will, and they can hang up, the same way people hang up on an answering machine. But the DCRM AI Voice Receptionist™ does not sound robotic, so a lot of patients do engage. And if somebody wants a person, they say so and she puts them through. The worst case is a hang-up, which is what you had before.
What happens if it cannot understand the caller?
It says so, offers a callback and opens an SMS thread. The contact still exists, so your team can follow up.
Find out how many calls your practice is missing, before you decide anything.
If you have no idea what that number is, ToothTalk™ Analytics will tell you exactly what is happening on your phone. And rather than reading about her, the fastest way to understand the AI Voice Receptionist™ is to ring her yourself on a demo.