AI Inbound Receptionist

Overview

A mid-size dental practice was losing an estimated $15,000/month in missed appointment bookings due to after-hours calls going to voicemail. Their front desk staff was also overwhelmed during peak hours, leading to long hold times and abandoned calls. We deployed a conversational AI voice agent that handles the entire inbound call flow — greeting callers naturally, understanding their intent, qualifying new patient leads, checking appointment availability, and booking directly into the practice management system. The AI handles insurance questions, provides office hours and directions, and seamlessly transfers to a human when the situation requires it.

The Challenge

The practice needed an AI that could handle the nuance of medical scheduling — understanding urgency levels, insurance verification requirements, provider preferences, and complex scheduling rules like procedure-specific time blocks. The system also needed to sound natural enough that callers wouldn't hang up, and had to integrate with their existing practice management software that had no public API.

Our Approach

We built a custom voice pipeline using Twilio for telephony, a fine-tuned LLM for conversation management, and ElevenLabs for natural-sounding text-to-speech. The system connects to the practice management software via a custom API bridge we built to read and write appointment data. We trained the model on hundreds of real call transcripts to understand dental-specific terminology and patient intent patterns. The AI uses a decision tree backed by LLM reasoning to determine when to book, when to ask clarifying questions, and when to transfer to staff.

Key Features

• 24/7 call handling with zero downtime
• Natural conversational voice with minimal latency
• Real-time appointment booking into practice management system
• Insurance eligibility pre-screening
• Urgent call detection and instant human transfer
• Call recording and full transcription for compliance
• Daily summary reports emailed to practice manager

Results

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