It is 12:40pm. One receptionist is at lunch, the other is checking in a patient, and the phone rings out. That caller had a cracked tooth and wanted an appointment this week. They ring the practice down the road instead.
Most practice owners know this happens. Few know how often. An AI receptionist is a simple fix for it: a voice assistant that answers every call your team cannot, books the appointment and hands anything clinical back to a person. Here is how it works in a dental practice, where the line sits and what it costs.
How many calls a dental practice misses
Around 30 percent of calls to dental practices go unanswered, and roughly 40 percent of new-patient calls come in outside business hours. Those are the two numbers that matter. The first is the lunch rush and the busy front desk. The second is the patient who only has time to call after work.
A new patient can be worth thousands of dollars over the years they stay with you. If even two of those calls a week go to voicemail and never call back, the cost runs well past anything you would pay to answer them.
What an AI receptionist does on a dental call
Answers straight away, during the lunch rush, after hours, on weekends and when every line is busy.
Answers the common questions about location, parking, hours, new-patient fees, health fund rebates and whether you see children. It is trained on your practice, so the answers are yours.
Books the appointment. Where your practice software takes online bookings, it books straight in. Where it does not, it takes the patient details and preferred times and sends them to the front desk to confirm first thing.
Flags emergencies. Pain, swelling, a knocked-out tooth: it recognises the urgent calls and transfers them or alerts your on-call dentist, following the rules you set.
Texts you a summary of every call it handled, so nothing gets lost between the phone and the appointment book.
What it should never do
It does not give clinical advice, triage symptoms or tell anyone whether they need treatment. Its job is the front desk, not the chair. Anything beyond booking and general information goes to a person.
That line is not just good practice. Health information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, and AHPRA advertising rules apply to anything the practice says to patients. A well-built receptionist says it is an AI assistant, collects only what it needs to book, and passes anything clinical on to a person.
Questions to ask any AI receptionist provider
Where are call recordings and transcripts stored, and for how long? Can you switch recording off? Who can access them?
How does it handle an emergency call, and can you set the rules yourself?
Does it book into your practice software, or does it only take messages? Both work. You just need to know which one you are buying.
Can you hear it on a test call before it goes live? You should, using your own scenarios: a new patient, a recall, an emergency and a fee question.
What it costs
Our AI receptionist is from $750 to set up and $199 a month to run. Setup covers learning how your practice works, writing the call rules, connecting it to your phone line and testing it before it takes a real call.
Compare that with what it replaces. A part-time receptionist to cover lunch and after hours costs many times more, and still cannot answer three calls at once. If the receptionist books one or two new patients a month that you would otherwise have missed, it has paid for itself.
Where to start
Start with the gaps: lunch, after hours and overflow when the front desk is busy. Your team keeps answering when they can, and the AI picks up when they cannot. Run it for a month, count the bookings it made, then decide whether to extend it.
If you want the wider picture, including reminders, recalls and no-shows, read AI for dental and medical practices. Or tell us how your front desk runs and we will tell you plainly whether it is worth it for your practice.
