For dental practitioners using legacy networks or manual call and note-taking, upgrading to Dentsy AI phone system delivers an instant improvement. Workflows are more efficient, front desk time more productive, and patients more satisfied. Here’s what it does, why Dentsy is different to standard phone platforms, and where it fits into your current workflow.
Dentsy AI phone system vs traditional answering service
Here’s the typical patient experience for connecting with their chosen dental practice. They dial the practice and, if lucky, get through to a receptionist. If lines are busy, they’ll be diverted to the next available receptionist or sent to voicemail.
In the context of patients requiring urgent attention in an emergency, there’s an obvious weakness to this arrangement.
1. Patients cannot wait for a busy front desk to call them back, or wait for an out of hours voicemail to be picked up by a receptionist the next working day. In an emergency, that patient finds another dental practice.
2. A busy receptionist taking a call has no context. They see a number on the screen without the time to prepare. That often means the first 30-45 seconds are devoted to establishing fundamental details. In an emergency, that loads extra frustration onto the caller.
How Dentsy lets receptionists take calls differently
Dentsy smart caller pop-up recognises the number of any caller in the PMS and displays their full name, details and treatment or appointment history on screen. As a result, the receptionist can greet the caller by name and resume communication from the last relevant milestone, not the very beginning. When every second matters, that’s crucial to taking the most appropriate action fast.
For new callers whose number is not yet in the PMS, Dentsy AI phone system allows you to make a new record and saves it automatically at the end of the call. That’s the first step in turning a first-time caller into a loyal client.
Smoother communication also works in the other direction. Instead of searching for a client’s number and scrambling to locate their record, the receptionist can summon their file from the dashboard and call directly in one click without any need for a telephone handset.
For front desks who have a long list of appointments to confirm, rebookings and last-minute slots to fill, those seconds saved can add up to hours over the course of the week.
Dentsy vs out of hours call handling
Dental practices have a number of options for managing out of hours calls, not all of them equally effective. Some restrict themselves solely to voicemail, many will redirect emergencies to NHS 111, and others pay for a third-party call-handling service. This would be a call centre or answering service that picks up when reception is closed, takes a message, and passes it on.
It’s better than a dead line or endless voicemail, and it solves the basic problem of someone answering the phone. But the benefits are limited and it often means that the practice is sending urgent care clients to other providers.
Human answering services aren’t always dentistry-trained
They can take a message, but they can’t check appointment availability, distinguish a routine query from a time-sensitive one using the practice’s own rules, or update the PMS. Someone still has to do that manually the next morning.
Handovers create gaps
When the patient emails or texts the message to the practice, a team member has to read it, work out what it means, and act on it. That could be hours after the original call. Details can get lost or misunderstood along the way, and the patient has no idea when, or whether, they’ll hear back.
Finally, there’s the additional cost of paying for a premium-rate service when the practice could be integrating an affordable alternative directly into their existing PMS.
How Dentsy answers the call differently
As two platforms in one, Dentsy combines a top-tier AI phone receptionist and AI phone system. Crucially, the AI phone receptionist can be primed with a custom dictionary during set up so that it responds with an authentic tone and clinical vocabulary. It speaks fluently and humanly, with most callers unaware they were talking to AI.
Dentsy AI phone system will recognise an emergency situation or conversation that needs to be escalated to a dental professional immediately. Triage happens in seconds, not overnight.
Integration is also easy and intuitive. Dentsy AI phone system connects directly to the PMS the clinic is already using, without the requirement for a third-party API to provide the bridge.
24/7 call handling with instant intelligence
One of the areas where Dentsy makes an instant, noticeable impact is in note-taking. Existing customers report time-saving measured in hours per day.
The status quo is for receptionists to scribble notes by hand during the call, then spend minutes after the call transferring them to the PMS. That’s the ideal scenario. The reality, however, is that another call will inevitably interrupt the sequence, or errors might creep in between note pad and database.
How Dentsy transforms note taking
Dentsy AI phone system takes care of the whole process, leaving the receptionist’s hands free and their time unlimited. Dentsy posts the call recording, transcription, summary and analysis instantly to the PMS. It can also allocate next steps and tag the appropriate people. Instead of receptionists starting the day by ploughing through voicemails, the agent finds a ready-made to-do list with all information neatly summarised.
It makes appointment booking slicker too. All information discussed over the phone is sent to the PMS, the booking entered into the calendar, and a reminder or confirmation SMS sent to the patient. This can eliminate one of the biggest sources of leaking revenue for any dental practice – clients missing appointments that could have been filled for high-value treatments.
Visibility into team performance
Whether it’s a boutique local dental practice or a nationwide group, call performance is hard to monitor and manage with a legacy system.
Conventional phone systems track no call data, both within the practice and from the client perspective. That leaves clinic or group managers with little visibility into the strengths and weaknesses of their teams, or the areas where opportunities await.
It’s an important consideration from a compliance perspective. Under recently introduced NHS England urgent care mandates, practices must meet a target of 8.2% contract value as emergency care. Tracking call volumes and categories manually adds complexity. Automated call analysis with Dentsy, on the other hand, reveals valuable data.
How Dentsy illuminates the hidden insight
The key feature here is the conversation analysis tool, which interprets the call transcript and summary for performance indicators.
Was information conveyed accurately and clearly? Were all parts of the call completed, or were crucial opportunities lost during the opening or closing? Are the front desk fully capturing the opportunities and fully explaining the treatment options and fee structures? On a more fundamental level, are the best-performing receptionists paired with the most profitable treatment opportunities?
The level of intelligence, analytics and insight that Dentsy gathers is impressive. The simplicity with which it presents that data on a one-click-access dashboard goes far beyond any platform most dental practices will have worked with.
Built for dental practice workflows
A general-purpose system with a call centre-style AI answering service might be serviceable, but it lacks the context to support the front desk fully. In addition, integration is rarely as simple as ‘bolting on’ a phone system to your PMS. Retrofitting your AI phone system to match your client database will inevitably lead to glitches and errors.
Dentsy offers native integrations with the leading PMS systems for estate agents. Instead of creating a second system to manage, it plugs straight in and is ready to go almost immediately.
There’s a huge step up in quality from a system built for businesses, and a platform designed specifically for dental practitioners. In planning Dentsy, we embarked on a mission to understand how dental clinics really work, what tools they need, and where frustrations arise. We then built a system whose full range of features they would actually use.
Want to upgrade from your legacy phone system to the next generation of smart AI phone systems?
