AI receptionist for dentists

What an AI receptionist does for a dental practice

It answers the practice phone, holds a normal spoken conversation with the patient, and deals with the call the way your reception would. New patient enquiries, appointment booking and rebooking, cancellations, and emergencies outside practice hours are the four it handles most.

It is not a phone menu. The patient speaks normally and it replies in a natural voice, using your practice name and your greeting. It knows what you have told it: your opening hours, your services, your fees, whether you have NHS capacity, what counts as an emergency and what it must never say. When the call ends you get a written summary of who rang and what they wanted.

It is the same AI receptionist we build for any UK business, with the questions, the rules and the handovers written around a dental practice instead of a building site.

How it answers the practice line

You keep your existing number, and the calls you choose are passed to the receptionist. That can be every call, only the ones nobody picks up, or only the calls that come in after you close.

On a practice phone system that is a forwarding rule; on a mobile it is a divert you switch on and off. Any line that can divert or forward will work, including VoIP and cloud phone systems. Patients keep ringing the number on your door, your website and your Google listing, and nothing changes for them except that someone answers.

What it does on a patient call

The work your reception does on the phone, minus the clinical judgement. The exact list is settled when we build it, because no two practices run their diary or their emergency rota the same way.

The usual jobs are:

• New patient enquiries. Whether you are taking patients, NHS or private, what a first appointment involves, what it costs, how long the wait is, where to park, and what to bring. It answers from what you have told it, and it does not guess at the parts you have not.
• Booking and rebooking. It checks your real availability and books the slot while the patient is on the line, then the patient gets a text confirming it.
• Cancellations. It takes the cancellation and tells you at once, so the gap is in front of your team the same morning rather than at the end of the day.
• Emergencies, handled your way. You write the rule and it follows it: a patient in pain tonight can be put straight through to a mobile you nominate, or taken down in full and flagged to you immediately. Before it connects anyone, it tells you who is calling and why.
• Telling you what happened. After each call you get a summary of who rang, what they wanted and what the receptionist told them, by text, by email, or both, with the transcript and the recording kept alongside it.

No clinical advice, ever

No. It does not diagnose, it does not advise on treatment, and it does not tell a patient whether a symptom is serious. Those limits are written in before it goes live and they are not negotiable.

What it does instead is take the details, apply the rule you have given it for urgency, and get the patient to a person. We agree the rest of the limits with you in the same pass: what it may quote, what it may promise about a wait, and which callers it should hand straight over rather than deal with itself. When a patient asks something outside what it knows, it says so plainly and takes a message.

Announced as an AI on every call

Yes. It says at the start of every call that it is an automated receptionist and that the call is recorded.

We think that is the right thing to do, and it fits UK data protection guidance on being open with people about how their information is handled. The ICO's guidance on AI and data protection sets out that expectation. It still speaks in a natural voice rather than a robotic one, and you choose that voice from a range of British and other accents.

Out of hours, weekends and bank holidays

Yes, at any hour, including evenings, weekends and bank holidays, because there is no rota to staff.

Out of hours is where a dental practice feels a missed call hardest: the patient in pain at nine at night is the one who will ring whoever answers. You decide when it is on. If you would rather your own team answered during surgery hours, it picks up only the calls you miss, or only the calls that arrive after you close.

The diaries it books into

It books into Google Calendar, Cal.com or Calendly during the call. Practice management software is possible on a custom plan, where that system allows it, and the consultation is where we check whether yours does.

We would rather say that plainly than claim a list of dental integrations we have not built. Where the diary cannot be written to, the receptionist still takes the booking in full and passes it to your team to enter, which is how most of the calls your practice misses today would be rescued anyway.

Different from a dental answering service

An answering service puts a person on your calls, usually paid per call or per minute, and usually takes a message. We build a receptionist that handles the call itself, for one flat monthly fee for unlimited agents with nothing extra per call or per minute, and we keep it working as part of that fee.

The self-serve AI tools sit at the other end: you set the receptionist up yourself from a form or your website, and you keep it up to date yourself. We do that part for you, and keeping it up to date is part of what the monthly fee covers. Our article on an AI receptionist versus an answering service sets the two side by side in detail, including how each one is priced.

How we build it, and how long it takes

We build it around your practice, and you hear it answering your own patients before it takes the line on its own. Here is how it runs.

1. A 30-minute consultation. You tell us how calls reach reception now, what patients usually want, which calls you miss, and what you want done with each kind. We tell you what we would build and give you the price.
2. Scope. We watch how calls are handled today and agree what the receptionist will do: what it knows about your practice, the questions it asks, and the rules for emergencies and handovers.
3. Build. We build it inside the tools you already use, connected to your diary where that is possible.
4. Test. It runs on your real calls, checked by us, until it gets them right. You ring it, your reception team rings it, you read the summaries, and we change whatever does not sound like your practice.
5. Live. It does the job on its own, and we keep it working.

A receptionist that writes into your own practice software needs that software to let another program write to the diary; where it cannot, the receptionist takes the booking in full for your team. Either way, your line only diverts to it once it is getting your calls right. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are.

What it costs a dental practice

Agent Place charges one flat monthly fee for unlimited agents: the receptionist, and any other agent you want after it, for the same fee, month to month. We give you the price on the call.

We set it on the consultation once we know what the receptionist must do and what it must connect to. Nothing extra per call, minute or message. Stop any month. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are. The pricing on our homepage works the same way for every business we build for; there is no dental surcharge. Our articles go into the choices behind an AI receptionist in more depth.

Stop missing patient calls

Tell us how calls reach your reception today and what you would like done with each one. We will tell you on the call whether an AI receptionist is right for your practice, what we would build, and the price.

Unlimited agents. One flat monthly fee. Fully functioning and delivering value in 30 days guaranteed, or you pay nothing more until your agents are.