AI phone receptionist for dental clinics
Quick summary
- At nine both of you have gloves on. The phone rings in the corridor and nobody can pick up.
- Pain, a new patient asking for a first exam, and a move of Thursday's hygienist are three different jobs. Voicemail treats them as one.
- The assistant answers every line at once, so a Monday cluster is conversations, not busy tones.
- It checks your real diary before it offers a time, books it, and sends the SMS itself.
- A swollen face is not a booking type. The assistant writes down what the caller said and rings the phone you named.
- It answers in the caller's language. In a Greek practice that often means Greek, English, Albanian, Russian and German in the same week.
TL;DR
At nine the dentist is in a filling and the nurse is holding the suction. Neither can pick up. The person with a swollen face does not leave a message. They dial the next practice. An AI receptionist answers every line at once, in the caller's language, checks the diary before it offers a time, books the check-up or the hygienist, texts the confirmation, and puts a pain call in front of a human. It does not decide whether that face needs to be seen today. It writes down what was said. You decide.
Key takeaways
- Put the assistant on the number patients already have. If someone at the desk picks up, the call never forwards.
- Forward after 15–20 seconds, so the desk keeps what it can take.
- Give it the two facts every caller asks first: whether you take new patients, and where they park.
- Let it book check-ups and hygienist times. Keep surgical work and first exams as callbacks unless you have set those types yourself.
- Have pain calls tagged and sent to a phone, not left in a summary email until the evening.
- Turn on SMS reminders before you turn on anything else. A no-show is the cheapest problem here to fix.
What the assistant does in a dental practice
At nine the dentist is in a filling. The nurse is holding the suction. The phone rings in the corridor. Neither of you can pick up.
The assistant takes that call. It talks the way a receptionist would. Then it does something: puts a check-up or a hygienist visit into your diary, sends the SMS, or writes down what was said and puts it in front of a human.
A patient moving Thursday’s scale and polish to Friday can be finished on the phone. The assistant looks at the hygienist’s book, offers a time that is actually free, books it, and texts. A patient with a swollen face cannot be finished on the phone. An assistant that books that face into 16:30 sounds sure. You have not seen the face.
So you tell it which calls it may finish and which it may only take down. It asks the questions you would ask. It writes the answers in the caller’s words. It never decides how urgent a tooth is.
Why nobody picks up at nine
Monday morning is when the phone rings most. It is also when both of you are already at a patient. In a two-chair practice the person who would have picked up is the same person who mixed the composite and is now holding the suction. The handpiece is on. The gloves are on. The phone is a noise in the next room.
That is how you work. It is not a hiring failure. You can open the phone at eight and still miss the twenty-to-nine cluster, because at twenty to nine both of you already have gloves on and the next patient is in the waiting room.
The calls arrive in a heap at the start. Another receptionist on a Tuesday does not fix four calls at 09:12. The second, third and fourth caller still hear busy. The first one may already have hung up.
A new patient with your name and four others on a screen does not leave a message. They dial the next practice. You never learn they called.
Pain arrives in the same window. The person who has been awake since three rings while you are in a root-canal visit. Nobody can put the handpiece down to answer.
Pain is not a booking type
A check-up is a booking type. A scale and polish is a booking type. A crown fit, once the lab has sent the work back, is a booking type. Swelling is not. Neither is a tooth that kept someone up, a crown in a napkin from breakfast, a child whose face is hot on one side, or a knock from a Saturday football match.
Those calls have to be taken down, not dropped into a free half hour. The assistant asks the questions you told it to ask — where the pain is, whether the face is swollen, how long it has been going on, whether they can swallow. It writes the answers in the caller’s words. Then it rings a phone you named. It does not leave the note for the evening.
What it must not do is offer 16:30 to a face you have not seen, or tell a caller that Thursday is soon enough. Both sentences decide something you have not decided. The practice owns every sentence the assistant says.
“I’m sure the dentist will fit you in today” is the same problem, said politely. It promises a time the dentist has not looked at. The assistant says, plainly, that it cannot tell the caller when they will be seen.
If the caller asks whether they need antibiotics, the assistant writes the question down with the symptoms that came with it, and a dentist calls back. If they ask whether “this can wait until after the holidays,” it does not answer. It takes the request and flags it.
The dentist’s book and the hygienist’s book
A dental diary is not one list. The dentist and the hygienist are different people, with different appointment lengths and different rules about who they see. A new-patient examination belongs to the dentist. A six-month scale and polish belongs to the hygienist. A review after an extraction may belong to either, depending on how you work.
If the assistant treats any free time as a win, it will put a crown prep into the hygienist’s morning and a child’s first visit into a twenty-minute check-up gap. Both look booked. Both fail when the patient sits down.
Setup therefore starts with the types you already use, not with a generic menu. Check-up. Scale and polish. New-patient exam. Crown prep. Crown fit. Root-canal visit. Extraction. Review. Whitening — if you offer it — as a consult, not as a treatment. Each type has a duration and a clinician. The assistant may offer a time only when both match.
A crown fit is not free just because the dentist’s afternoon is empty. The lab has to have sent the work back. If you have not marked that work as in, the assistant takes a callback.
Surgical work and first consultations stay as callbacks in most practices, because the length is a judgement and the clinician is a choice. The assistant still takes the enquiry.
Implants, if you do them, are a consult. The assistant can say that you offer the consult and take a request for one. It does not book the surgery from a telephone description of a missing tooth.
When the caller says the crown came off
“My crown came off” is one of the commonest sentences on a dental line. It can be three different situations.
Sometimes the crown is intact, the patient has it in a bag, and they are not in pain. Sometimes the tooth underneath is broken and they are. Sometimes the face is swollen, and this is no longer a conversation about putting something back.
The assistant’s job is to find out which of those three the caller is describing, without deciding the work. It asks whether they are in pain, whether the face is swollen, whether they have the crown, and whether the tooth is sharp to the tongue. Those four answers change who needs to read the transcript and how fast.
It does not say “we can recement that this afternoon.” Recementing is a plan for a tooth nobody has looked at. It does not quote a price for “putting it back on.” Nobody has seen the tooth.
A broken filling, a lost temporary, and a tooth knocked in a fall can arrive in the same tone of voice. The assistant asks the questions you set and rings the phone you named when the answers include swelling, a knock, or bleeding that will not stop.
What it may say about money
The assistant can read out the figures you chose to publish. A check-up fee. A hygienist visit. A receptionist already says those.
It cannot estimate a root canal from a telephone description of a toothache. It cannot price an implant or a new crown from “it came off into my bread.” If the caller wants a number you have not published, it takes a request for a callback.
Whitening is a consult, if you offer it. Shade and starting colour are not things the assistant can see. It books the consult you configured, or it writes the question down.
If you work with a fund or an insurer, give it one clean sentence for the ones you take and one for the ones you do not. If you take none, say that.
How CITT handles it
- Your number stays yours. You add a forwarding rule at your provider — everything, or only what has rung unanswered for the seconds you choose. Calls your front desk answers never leave the practice.
- Every line is answered at once. A Monday cluster is a set of conversations, not a queue of busy tones.
- It knows the practice you described. Which treatments you offer, whether you are taking new patients, opening hours, Thursday at two, where to park, what a check-up costs if you publish that.
- It checks the diary before it offers a time, and books into the same books your team already uses. Dentist and hygienist stay separate.
- It confirms by SMS, and can remind before the appointment.
- It escalates what should not be settled on the phone, tagged and sent to a real phone rather than filed for the evening.
- You get the transcript, the summary, and the details — pushed into whatever the practice already uses.
What it will not do
It will not decide whether a swollen face needs to be seen today. It will not promise a same-day extraction. It will not put a surgical time into the hygienist’s column. It will not quote a plan for a tooth it has not seen. It will not tell a patient their radiograph “looks fine.” It will not pretend to be a nurse.
If a caller asks whether the implant is still a good idea, it takes the request for a consult. If they ask you to look at a photo, it does not interpret the photo. If they ask for something for the pain until they can come in, it does not suggest a tablet, a rinse, or a delay. It records the question and rings the phone you named.
It will not shorten a type to make a time fit. If the length you set does not fit, the assistant offers another day or takes a callback.
What these calls sound like
On a pain call the assistant will not say when a swollen face will be seen. A sentence that promises “today” is a commitment the dentist has not made.
A routine “move Thursday’s hygienist” is a diary change: find the scale and polish, release it, offer two times that are actually free, book one, text. It is a change, not a cancellation followed by a new booking.
A new-patient call can cover whether you are taking people, parking, and a first exam if you allow that type. The first visit is an examination, not a treatment plan.
A parent calling about a child is still one caller and one diary. The assistant takes both names and the answers to the questions you set. It does not tell the parent that a hot face “is probably just teething.” It writes what they said and, if the answers include the phrases you marked, it rings you.
Tell callers it is an assistant. The greeting can use the practice name and still be honest.
Recalls, moves, and two times for one patient
A hygienist recall list is outbound work. The assistant calls the names you gave it, offers a time the hygienist’s book actually has, books it if they take it, and leaves the rest for the desk. It does not move a recall into the dentist’s column because that afternoon looked emptier.
When a patient needs to move Thursday, the assistant must release the old time before it offers the new one. Otherwise Thursday stays blocked and Friday is taken.
If they want to move a crown fit, the assistant checks that the work is still marked as back. If the lab date has slipped, it takes a callback. SMS reminders go out in the language of the call. After a move they go to the new number, not the old one.
August, Saturday, and Friday at twenty to eight
In August the staff is thinner. People with swollen faces still ring. Saturday morning is when the crown comes off into a piece of bread. Friday at twenty to eight is when the parent finally gets the child to admit the tooth has hurt all week.
The assistant answers those hours the same way it answers a Tuesday at ten. Out of hours it should book less, not more: more callbacks, fewer times dropped into a Monday the dentist has not yet seen, and a lower bar for ringing the on-call mobile when swelling is mentioned.
The transcript still lands. Monday then starts with a list: who is in pain, which crowns are in bags, who asked for something after five, who already took a hygienist time.
If Saturday morning is for pain and the work you already booked, do not let the assistant offer a whitening consult into that morning. You mark which types may be booked on Saturday. It only offers those.
What you configure before the first live call
Give it the facts the desk already recites. Whether you are taking new patients this month. Opening hours, including the Thursday you finish at two. Parking — street or basement. Which funds you work with, if any, and a clean sentence for the ones you do not. The published price of a check-up and a hygienist visit, if you publish those. The appointment types, their real durations, and which clinician owns which type. The phrases that must ring a phone: swelling, cannot swallow, face hot, trauma, bleeding that will not stop.
Then decide the forwarding rule. Fifteen to twenty seconds is the usual start: the desk keeps what it can reach, the assistant takes what is still ringing. Immediate forward is for the hours the door is locked — evenings, Saturdays, August.
Count the first two hours of Monday before you change anything else. Then set the two books, the types, and the phrases that must ring a phone.
Rates live on the pricing section of the home page.
AI receptionist, in-house staff, or a call centre
| CITT | In-house | Call centre | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers while you are both at the chair | Always | Only when not in gloves | Yes |
| Calls handled at the same time | Every line at once | One | Depends on the plan |
| Dentist's book and hygienist's book | Yes — checks both before offering | Yes | Rarely; usually takes a message |
| Pain call | Records the answers and rings a phone | If someone is free to hear it | A message, later |
| Speaks the patient's language | 70+ languages | One or two | Whatever was staffed |
| Evenings, weekends, August | Same as any other hour | No | At a surcharge |
| What it will not do | Decide whether a face needs to be seen today | Decides in the room | Does not know your chair schedule |
What one missed Monday morning costs a two-chair practice
Worked from these assumptions — change any of them and the answer changes:
- Two chairs, roughly 35 inbound calls on a Monday.
- About a third of Monday calls come in during the first two hours, when both of you are already at the chair.
- Of the calls nobody reaches, 6 are new-patient enquiries.
- A new patient is worth about €180 in the first year of routine care — put your own figure in here. This is the number to change first.
- This example assumes 4 of those 6 do not call back. Replace that share with what you actually see.
- 6 new-patient enquiries reach voicemail on a normal Monday morning.
- 4 of them do not call back and book elsewhere.
- 4 × €180 = €720 of first-year revenue, on one morning.
- Mondays alone, over a 46-week year — 46 × €720.
About €33,000 a year, from one recurring two-hour window.
What it costs
CITT is pay as you go: no packages, no minimum, no contract. The current rates — the monthly fee per number and the per-minute rate — are on the pricing section of the home page, which is the only place they are published.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to give up my practice number?
No. You keep the number your patients and your referrers already have. You set one forwarding rule with your telephony provider — either every call goes to the assistant, or only the calls still ringing after a set number of seconds. If your front desk picks up, the call is never forwarded and never charged.
Can it tell whether a patient needs to be seen today?
It does not make that call, and you should be suspicious of anything that claims to. What it does is ask the questions you tell it to ask, record the answers in the caller's words, and flag the call so a human sees it at once rather than in an evening summary. The decision stays with the practice.
Will it double-book the chair?
It reads the same diaries your team works from and checks a time before it offers it, so a time that is already taken is never offered. If the diary cannot be reached at that moment, it takes the request as a callback instead of guessing. An appointment it is not sure about is worse than no appointment.
What happens with a patient who speaks no Greek?
It recognises the language from the first sentence and continues in it, including switching mid-call if the patient changes. In a Greek practice that typically means Greek, English, Albanian, Russian and German without anyone configuring anything. It works in 70+ languages.
Can it handle a hygienist recall list?
Yes — it can call out as well as answer. A recall list becomes a set of outbound calls that offer the patient a time, book it if they take it, and leave the rest for the front desk. The same rules apply: it books only what the diary confirms, and only into the hygienist's book if that is the type you set.
What do we actually see afterwards?
A transcript of every call, a short written summary, the details the caller gave, and whatever it booked or was asked to pass on. Those land on the dashboard and can be pushed into the software the practice already uses.
