Dental Practices
Voice Assistant answers your practice telephone with a greeting you write yourself, takes what the caller tells it, and emails you a summary of what the caller wanted. It does not book appointments and it does not open your schedule; what it has been given is the opening hours you set plus one box of plain writing about the practice.
Suppose you find out this week that someone rang twice, got the machine both times, and booked somewhere else. The one person who covers your front desk was chairside, assisting. You were chairside too. Nobody was doing anything wrong. The phone rang at half past two on a Tuesday, it went to voicemail, and that was that. You have been returning calls between patients for years and mostly it works, but you cannot ring back a number you never got, and it is hard to know how often this has already happened without anyone telling you.
We could find no credible study, in either direction, on how dental patients react to an automated voice answering a practice phone, so we will not tell you they do not mind. What we can tell you is that you write the greeting, word for word, and that is what every caller hears. It is also worth naming the thing you are comparing it against, because the alternative on your line right now is also a machine.
Laura Nelson, a practice consultant writing in Dentistry IQ, quoted the answering-machine greetings she thinks drive new callers away, including "if you have reached us during business hours, we must be helping another patient, so please leave a message" and "we don't accept cancellations on this voice mail". Her advice is that a live person should answer during business hours whenever possible, and that a greeting should create a warm and welcoming feeling. That is one consultant's view, not measured data. But if the words above are close to what your box says today, they are worth reading aloud once before you decide the status quo is the safe option.
No. Voice Assistant takes messages. It gathers what the caller tells it and emails you a summary of what they wanted, and it can text you one as well if you want that switched on. It does not open your schedule, it does not offer times, and it does not put anyone in the book. What it changes is where a caller's name, number and reason for ringing end up: in your inbox.
Two things, and only two. It knows the opening hours you give it, and it knows one box of plain writing you fill in about the business — what you want it to be able to tell a caller. Because there are only those two inputs, you can read everything you have given it before a single call comes in.
You do. The out-of-hours message and voicemail are switches you control, and the wording is yours. In Ontario, Professional Misconduct, O. Reg. 853/93, s. 2, para. 18, under the Dentistry Act, 1991, provides that failing to make arrangements for emergency dental services for your patients, or to advise a patient how to obtain them, is an act of professional misconduct. Nothing we found says an unanswered phone is itself misconduct, and we are not going to suggest it. The narrower and truer point is that those arrangements are yours to make, and an out-of-hours message you have written yourself is a place to say plainly how to get emergency care.
Only if you switch recording on, and it is off until you do. If you switch it on, informing callers is your job: the product does not announce recording to them. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's guidance on recording customer telephone calls says an organisation must inform the customer that the call is being recorded, clearly state the purpose, and ask for consent. It says consent may be implied if the caller proceeds after being told, that an alternative must be offered to callers who object, and that you must not state one purpose while using the recording for another. That wording belongs in the greeting you write, before the switch goes on.
Everything is processed in the United States — there is no Canadian region — and what is processed, what is kept and where it goes is set out on our privacy page.
A person does the setup with you; there is no self-serve signup, and the demo form provisions nothing. One assistant is $99 a month, two are $149, all three are $199, in Canadian dollars. If you later add the Visitor Assistant for the waiting-room tablet or the Autopilot Assistant for paperwork, all three share one Contacts list. We have no independent reviews, ratings or case studies to show you, so the only honest way to judge this is to hear the greeting and decide.
Illustration — a fictional practice, not a customer. Bayfield Lane Dental is one chair, one dentist, one hygiene day a week and one person covering the desk, the sterilisation room and the phone. Before anything goes live, the practice writes two things down. The first is the greeting: "You've reached Bayfield Lane Dental. Our front desk is with a patient, so I'm the assistant that takes messages. Tell me your name, a number to reach you, and what you're calling about, and we'll ring you back." The second is the box of plain writing the assistant is given to draw on — where the practice is, which days it has hygiene appointments, that it is taking new patients, and that it bills the Canadian Dental Care Plan directly. The dentist reads the whole box aloud once, because the opening hours and that box are everything the assistant has been given. During a crown seat, someone rings about a chipped front tooth and leaves a name, a mobile number and the reason. A summary is emailed, and it is answered between patients, from the day sheet, the way callbacks have always been done here. The assistant books nothing: it does not open the schedule and it does not offer a time. The out-of-hours message is a separate switch with its own wording, which this practice has set to say how to reach after-hours emergency care. Recording is left off.
That is your decision, because you write the greeting. One option is to open with a plain line saying the phone is answered by an assistant that takes messages when the front desk is with a patient. Another is simply to give the practice name and ask how the caller can be helped. We will draft both wordings for you on the call and you choose. Whatever you choose is what every caller hears, word for word.
The assistant takes the message and emails you the summary. It does not triage and it does not decide what is urgent. What it gives you is control of the words a caller hears out of hours, including how to reach emergency care. The arrangements themselves remain yours to make.
Setting this up is our work, not a form you fill in. We go through your wording with you, and you can change any of it afterwards.
Digital Front Desk