What a clinic AI receptionist should handle
A busy front desk cannot answer the phone, greet the waiting room, and reply to every after-hours message at once. An AI receptionist takes the repetitive admin load off your team so they can focus on patients in the room. The core jobs are:
- Answer common questions: hours, location, parking, services, fees, what to bring.
- Book new appointments and reschedule or cancel existing ones.
- Send confirmations and reminders to reduce no-shows.
- Capture new-patient details and triage the enquiry.
- Escalate anything clinical to your team instead of answering it.
Where it draws the line: admin yes, clinical no
This is the part clinics worry about, and rightly so. The agent only answers from your real practice information, pricing and policies, and it is configured to never give medical advice. Clinical questions are escalated to your team. You approve exactly what the agent can and cannot say before any patient ever sees it, and every message is logged for review.
How after-hours booking works across channels
Patients increasingly book the same way they message everyone else, and rarely only during business hours. One agent covers every channel with the same instant, accurate reply.
| Channel | What the agent does for patients |
|---|---|
| SMS | Answers, books and reschedules, sends reminders |
| Replies with availability and confirms bookings | |
| Holds a full booking conversation after hours | |
| Instagram & Facebook | Responds to DMs and new-patient enquiries |
| Website live chat | Books the visitor before they leave the site |
Setup, cost and control
A standard deployment runs month-to-month with no lock-in, and the go-live timeline is confirmed in writing after the consultation. Most clinics start in the low four figures monthly, with no setup fee for standard deployments and a written quote after a 30-minute consultation. Your front desk keeps full control: every conversation is visible in real time, and staff can take over any thread by simply starting to type.