New patients ring when reception has gone home
Evening and weekend enquiries hit voicemail. The next practice on the search results answers.
After-hours demand, captured.
Clinical advice, never.
A quarter of after-hours calls to a private practice go unanswered, and a new-patient enquiry at 7pm is worth around £180 the first time and far more over a lifetime. Starter takes the call, books a hold or an appointment request, and hands anything clinical to a person.
WHERE THE MONEY LEAKS
Where a practice loses patients
Reception is on the phone instead of with the patient in front of them
Appointment changes, ‘do you do…’ questions and price-from enquiries eat the day.
Empty slots that could have been filled
Reminders sent late or not at all; cancellations that never get re-offered.
Books the appointment. Never plays dentist.
One inbound agent and a website widget trained on your treatments, hours, ‘price from’ rules and NHS versus private signposting — with a hard fence around anything clinical.
- 01ANSWER
Discloses it is the practice’s virtual receptionist
Recording notice in the first ten seconds. Takes the patient’s name, contact and what they are looking for.
- 02SIGNPOST
NHS or private, new or existing, routine or urgent
Pain, swelling and trauma go to your emergency path and a person. Everything else is booked or captured.
- 03HOLD OR REQUEST
Into Google Calendar or a held slot for staff to confirm
Write-back into Dentally, SOE or Exact only where an official API exists and only on Growth or Pro. Starter never scrapes your practice software.
- 04REMIND
Fewer no-shows on Growth
48-hour and 2-hour reminders that stop on reply; a review request after the appointment.
Guardrails are written before the first call.
Every agent ships with a written spec and a scripted test pack you sign off. It is configured to use your approved information and supported systems, and each of these rules is tested before go-live and checked in the reviews after it.
Diagnose, or give any clinical advice
Tested before go-live; automated checks and the weekly sampled review flag any breach for a person.
Quote a treatment price that is not in the approved price-from table
Tested before go-live; automated checks and the weekly sampled review flag any breach for a person.
Store clinical detail in transcripts
Tested before go-live; automated checks and the weekly sampled review flag any breach for a person.
Book the wrong clinician or the wrong treatment
Tested before go-live; automated checks and the weekly sampled review flag any breach for a person.
Miss the emergency path on pain, swelling or trauma
Tested before go-live; automated checks and the weekly sampled review flag any breach for a person.
USUAL STARTING RUNG
Clinical implementation — individually scoped
Dental and clinical caution language, multiple booking types and special-category data require a separately scoped implementation. Standard introductory package prices do not cover this additional clinical work. If you want the optional audit, it is £1,000 for regulated practices.
SETUPQuoted after reviewMONTHLYAgreed in your proposal
- Inbound voice agent with clinical fence and emergency path
- Website ‘Talk to us’ widget with text fallback
- Held-slot booking with staff confirmation
- NHS and private signposting
- Shorter retention and tighter purpose limitation on recordings
- 15-scenario test pack including pain, trauma and abuse
NEXT STEP
Start with a free conversation.
Tell us how enquiries reach you today and we will show you what we would set up first, then send a scoped proposal with the setup and monthly fee. No paid audit is required to get started. If you want a wider roadmap across several processes, the optional AI Opportunity Audit (£750) is there for that.