How it works, including the parts that can go wrong
Written for the person who is going to have to live with this: the office manager. If something here reads as vague, it’s a fair question to put to me on the call.
48 hours to a number you can call. Five business days to live.
- Day 0
A 30-minute call about your front desk
Not a sales call. I need to know how a new patient is actually handled today — what gets asked, in what order, and what your receptionist does when someone is in pain. Your hours, your appointment types and roughly how long each takes.
- Days 1–2
I build it against your script
Your emergency instructions go in verbatim, in your words. The agent is configured to collect the minimum: name, callback number, and the reason for calling. Not date of birth, not insurance ID.
- 48 hours in
You call it yourself and try to break it
From a real phone, not a widget on a screen. Call it as an angry patient. Call it asking whether you take Delta Dental. Call it mumbling. Tell me everywhere it was wrong and I fix those over the next two days, before anything is forwarded. Nothing has been paid at this point and no call has left your line.
- Day 5
The forward goes on, under your conditions
After hours only, after a set number of rings, or when the line is busy — you choose, and you can change it any time. This is the only change made to your phone system, and it is one you can undo yourself.
What happens on a single call
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It says what it is
Every call opens with the agent identifying itself as an automated assistant and stating that the call is recorded. Recording law varies by state, so this runs on every call regardless of where your practice is.
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It listens and takes three things
Name, callback number, and the reason for the call in the caller’s own words. It repeats the number back.
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It proposes a time — it does not commit you
In request mode, which is where most practices start, the agent offers a slot and tells the caller a team member will confirm it. Nothing enters your book automatically. In calendar mode it writes to a Google Calendar your front desk can see, and still sends the full transcript.
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You get the call in your inbox
Audio, transcript, and the three fields, in a sheet you own. Before your receptionist has finished their coffee.
What happens when it fails
Every vendor has this section. Most of them don’t publish it.
The caller asks something clinical
It stops. It does not guess and does not hedge. It takes a message, tells the caller a team member will call back, and flags the transcript.
The caller is in pain or bleeding
It reads your emergency instructions, in your words, and offers to transfer or page — exactly as you specified during setup. It never assesses the severity itself.
The caller is angry
It doesn’t argue. It takes the complaint down as a message and routes it to a human. Complaint handling is out of scope on purpose.
The agent itself goes down
The forward is conditional, not absolute. If the agent doesn’t answer, the call follows your existing fallback — your voicemail, the same as today. A failure puts you back where you started, not somewhere worse.
Your front desk hates it
Then we built the wrong thing, and I want to hear it on the weekly call. If it’s creating cleanup work for your team, that’s a defect. It gets fixed or you switch it off.
You want out
Remove the forward. Every call goes back to your line immediately. You don’t need to tell me first, and there is no cancellation fee.
Your practice management software
Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Curve — not directly, and I’d rather tell you that up front than have you discover it in week two.
The agent writes into a Google Calendar your front desk can see, and sends every booking as a notification with the full transcript. Your team confirms it into your PMS the same way they’d handle a booking taken on paper after hours.
If your PMS exposes an API your practice already pays for, we can look at a direct write. That’s a separate conversation, not part of the founding program.
Ask me the awkward version of any of this
Fifteen minutes. I'll play you a recorded call and tell you if your practice isn't a fit. Or email getdentavoice@gmail.com.
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