What dentists ask about an AI receptionist.

Older patients are completely fine. The AI talks plainly, slowly and clearly, just like your front desk would. She waits until they’re done talking. A long pause won’t let her cut in and start talking nonsense. If the AI doesn’t really understand what the older patient says, it will ask the caller to repeat what they said, because, of course, it’s very important that every detail is verified. That’s another system we have, where important details like date of birth, phone number and name, we ask the patient to actually spell out, because it’s very important that we match it. And if these people want a real person, basically, what Grace will do is take a message and send it to your PMS system directly, so you don’t need to use any external software. For example, if you use Open Dental, you will get a notification on top, covering what happened in the call and what to call back the patient with.

Yes. So, essentially, what Grace does, she connects to your PMS system. We collect certain data, like their date of birth and their phone number and their name, and we are able to actually pull the patient data and work with that patient. So extra details like any notes, special accommodations, insurance, et cetera are already covered inside their chart.

Yes. It doesn’t matter how complicated your rules are. If they’re connected to your PMS system and you tell us about it, we will make sure it follows it to the T. You’re not getting bookings at 2 AM with our system. You’re not getting quadruple bookings unless you want it. You set the rules on setup. We code that into our AI. For example, what she books, how far out she books, new patient spots, cleaning intervals. And if you want a rule changed ever, just tell us, and we’ll make it happen.

This actually does come up a lot. Just as I said before, she will take a message, and she will send it to your front desk, and your front desk will deal with it, either call them back or have the doctor call them back.

When we hop on the onboarding call with your front desk manager, we ask her what insurances you guys take. Grace is our AI. She’s able to essentially filter out insurances you guys do not take. So if somebody comes in saying, hey, look, I want to get a cleaning, but I have Medicaid, and you guys do not take Medicaid, we basically set up Grace where she says, unfortunately, we don’t want to set you something up and you walk in and you have a big bill. Then she asks if they want to pay with cash. That’s another alternative if they have insurance that you do not take. If you are in network, she’ll say, we are in network with Delta Dental PPO, for example, and we’ll verify your benefits before your visit. Regarding existing patients, we do connect to your PMS system, so we’re able to actually pull their data, all their information, their notes, et cetera. And Grace will know that knowledge, so she doesn’t really waste time asking for insurance on your existing patients. And once again, what she doesn’t do: she doesn’t go inside of their insurance and actually verify benefits for specific treatments, et cetera. That is something your team will still do.

Nothing. Literally nothing. What we ask is, after we finish our call and we’re good to go, connect us with your office manager, whoever actually runs the show regarding the PMS. We send her one document that she fills out. It takes maybe twenty, thirty minutes of her own time to fill out, just to make sure we get everything right and we don’t break anything, because we want specifics down to the smallest detail to make sure everything flows correctly. Then after she fills out the form, we hop on a call and basically talk. I introduce myself, and I get to know you and how your whole team works a bit more, ten, fifteen minutes. I connect to your PMS system via screen share. Then within forty-eight hours from that time, we build out your system. We test the heck out of it, and we make sure it’s ready to go within forty-eight hours, so your phone lines are covered.

So, essentially, once it’s built and it’s connected to your phone lines, we will send you a dashboard, kind of like a mini website. You can go on your phone or your desktop, and you see every single call, a summary of what happened on the call, tags on who the patient is, what the call was about, directly, like booking a new cleaning, et cetera. You can request a recording of the call, and you can see your daily, weekly and monthly metrics on that dashboard as well. And on day 30, we come together. We review that dashboard and the extra data we do have, and we see what she’s done.

An answering machine only takes a message. It’s an automated message, and your desk still has to call back, and it can’t really do much. And a lot of the time when people do hear an answering machine, they don’t even leave a message. What they end up doing is just calling another practice down the street that’s actually able to answer the phone. Grace literally books the visit on your schedule while they’re still talking on the call. Once again, she knows your office, doctors’ hours, blockouts, insurance, and who’s already a patient. If she ever needs to take a message, which doesn’t happen often, the message will directly land in your PMS system, and we log every call that comes in.

Look, this is true. I’m going to be completely frank. This is true when existing patients call regarding something small, like confirming an appointment or calling about a prescription, et cetera. But when it comes to new patients, I am telling you, you might be a good dentist, but unfortunately, people don’t look around trying to find the perfect dentist. If they have above a four star on Google, they’re just going to call another one. Unfortunately, your skills as a dentist can’t really be used to convince a patient to walk into the practice easily, unless you do social media, but that’s a completely different thing.