New patient enquiries
Whether you are taking registrations, what the first visit involves, how long it takes and what it costs, plus what to bring.
DENTAL FRONT DESK
AI receptionist for dental practices and clinics
A dental AI receptionist answers the routine half of the front desk: opening hours, what a check-up or hygiene visit costs, whether you are taking new patients, and booking or moving an appointment. Anything clinical, and anything that sounds like pain, goes straight to a person.
Send your website. See Elily answer as your business.
The short version
- Most dental enquiries are administrative: fees, availability, new-patient registration, moving an appointment.
- Emergencies must never be triaged by software. They should reach a person or your published emergency route immediately.
- Treatment prices that depend on an examination should be described as such, never quoted as a figure.
- Elily is a messaging receptionist on WhatsApp, not a phone answering service.
What actually happens at a dental front desk
The phone rings while the nurse is chairside and the receptionist is checking someone out. Two lines are engaged, someone is asking whether the practice takes their plan, someone else wants to move Thursday, and a patient with toothache is calling for the third time. None of that is complicated. All of it is time-critical, and most of it arrives in bursts.
The recurring cost is not the missed call itself. It is that the new-patient enquiry, which is worth years of hygiene appointments, is indistinguishable from the third call about a parking space until someone picks up.
A messaging receptionist splits that pile automatically. Routine questions get answered as they arrive, including at seven in the evening when people finally sit down. Anything clinical stops and waits for a human, which is exactly what a practice wants.
What it can handle for a dental practice
Fees for routine treatment
Check-ups, hygiene appointments and anything else with a published, fixed price, quoted exactly as you publish it.
Booking, moving and cancelling
Reading live availability before offering a time, then writing the confirmed appointment back to the calendar.
Opening hours and location
Late nights, closed afternoons, holiday cover and how to find the practice, answered without a human being interrupted.
Failed-appointment and deposit policies
Your written policy, stated calmly and identically to everyone, which is easier for a machine than for a tired receptionist.
Recalls and reminders
Reminders and follow-ups are part of Elily's Pro plan and need an approved WhatsApp template, so they are set up deliberately rather than switched on by accident.
Wherever you practise, check your own regulator
The front-desk problem is the same in the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia, and so is the safe scope. What differs is the rulebook around it: how patient communications must be recorded, what consent is needed before messaging someone, and how long records are kept.
None of that is decided by a software vendor, including this one. Before patient messaging goes live, check your own regulator's guidance and, if you are part of a wider health service, your organisation's information-governance rules. A practice inside the NHS has duties a private practice does not.
What it must never do
These are configuration decisions, and they should be made before go-live rather than after a complaint.
- Assess or triage symptoms, however routine the description sounds.
- Advise on pain, swelling, bleeding or medication, including over-the-counter medication.
- Quote a price for treatment that depends on an examination, such as implants, extractions or orthodontics.
- Promise a clinical outcome, a timescale for healing, or that a particular treatment is suitable.
- Handle a dental emergency itself, rather than routing it immediately to your published emergency arrangements.
- Discuss another patient's appointment, even with a family member.
The safe pattern is the same everywhere: answer what the practice publishes, and hand over everything that needs a clinician.
Setting it up for a practice
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Write down what is genuinely fixed
Check-up and hygiene fees, appointment lengths, opening hours, registration process, cancellation policy. This is the only content the receptionist should quote.
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Define the emergency route first
Decide the exact words that trigger an immediate handover and what the patient is told in the meantime, including out-of-hours arrangements. Test this before anything else.
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Draw the line on clinical questions
Anything about symptoms, suitability or medication goes to a person. Agree what the patient sees while they wait, so nobody is left staring at silence.
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Connect the diary the practice actually uses
Elily books into Google Calendar. If your practice-management system does not sync with a Google calendar, map that before go-live rather than assuming a connection exists.
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Test with real patient sentences
Use last week's genuine enquiries, including the badly typed ones and the ones that mention pain, and check the handover fires where it should.
See it answering as your practice
Send Elily your practice website on WhatsApp. She reads your published services, fees and hours and answers as your practice, so you can test the emergency handover before any patient does.
QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU START
Common questions
Can an AI receptionist book dental appointments?
Yes, where it can read live availability. Elily checks the connected Google Calendar before offering a slot and writes the confirmed appointment back, including reschedules and cancellations, inside the same WhatsApp conversation.
Is it safe to use an AI receptionist in a dental practice?
It is safe when it is scoped to what the practice publishes and handed over on anything clinical. Configure the emergency route and the clinical handover first, test them, and never let the software assess symptoms or advise on medication.
Can it answer questions about treatment prices?
For treatment with a published fixed fee, yes, quoted exactly as you publish it. For anything that depends on an examination, it should say what the cost depends on and offer a consultation rather than guess a figure.
Does an AI dental receptionist answer the phone?
Some products do; Elily does not. Elily is a messaging receptionist on your practice's own WhatsApp number. If your patients mostly call, a voice product is the right category, and the comparison page explains the trade-offs.
What about patient data?
Conversations happen on your own business WhatsApp number through the official WhatsApp Business Platform. Your practice remains responsible for how patient information is handled, so review the setup with whoever owns information governance before go-live.
KEEP READING
Where this goes next
THE NEXT MESSAGE CAN BE HERS
Answer the routine half. Protect the clinical half.
Send Elily your practice website on WhatsApp and see exactly where she answers and where she stops and fetches a person.
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