Your phone rang out at 5:15pm. That patient booked somewhere else.
It never shows up in a report, so nobody fixes it. Same with the chair that sits empty because a two o'clock cancelled and your nurse got through three names before the next patient walked in. I build the system that handles both, by text message, without touching your practice software.
Work out what it is costing you
Your numbers, not mine. I have no interest in quoting you an industry statistic you would be right to distrust. Put in what a patient is actually worth to your practice and how often the phone actually rings out.
Check-up, clean, x-rays, and whatever follows. Most practices land somewhere between A$400 and A$2,000.
Lunch, after five, and any time reception is with a patient. Your phone system can tell you exactly. Most practices guess low.
Some were already patients, some were sales calls. Drag it to whatever you believe.
The gaps nobody had time to backfill. Counted at a quarter of a new patient's value, because most are existing patients coming in for one appointment.
About A$0 a year
That is what walks out of the door on your own figures, before anyone spends a dollar on advertising to replace it. Advertising buys you more calls. It does not answer them.
A$0a week
A$16,780this system, first year, all in
A$0difference in year one
What it actually does
- Texts back every missed call, within a minute, from your own number. "Sorry we missed you, we are with a patient. What can we help with?" The conversation carries on by SMS and lands as a booking request in your inbox.
- Fills cancellations from a waitlist, automatically. A slot opens, your waitlist gets messaged in order, the first to reply takes it, and reception is told. No ringing three people from memory.
- Answers the boring questions after hours, in your words. Opening times, health funds, parking, emergencies, roughly what a check-up costs. Anything remotely clinical goes to a human, always.
- Sends you one number every Monday. Calls recovered, slots refilled, and what that is worth at the patient value you gave me. If the number is not there, you will see it before I do.
What it does not do, on purpose
- It does not touch your practice management software. No login, no integration, no vendor in the middle. That is why this is live in two weeks instead of two months, and why your IT support has nothing to sign off.
- It does not give clinical advice. Not "it tries not to". Anything that reads as a symptom, a pain, an injury or a medication is handed to your staff by a rule in the software, not by asking the AI nicely.
- It does not message your patient list. Replying to someone who just rang you is fine under the Spam Act. Blasting your database is not, and I will say no to it.
- It does not store clinical detail. Names, numbers and appointment times only. Under the Privacy Act, health information in a text thread is your liability as much as mine, so the system is built not to collect it.
Price
A$4,900set up, once, half up front and half when it goes live
A$990/monthrunning, monitored and improved, twelve month term
2 weeksfrom signing to the first text going out
One practice. One number. No per-message surprises, no setup fee that grows halfway through. If after the first month the report does not show you more than it costs, say so in that meeting and we will sort it out then rather than at the end of a twelve month term.
The first two practices in south-west Sydney pay A$2,450 to set up instead of A$4,900.
I am being straight with you about why: I have built this, I have not yet run it inside a Sydney dental practice, and I want two of them documented properly. In exchange for the discount I measure your week before we switch anything on, publish the before and after with your name on it, and you give me a couple of sentences if the numbers are good. Monthly fee is the same either way. When those two are done the price goes back up and stays there.
How the two weeks go
- Days 1 and 2, we measure what happens now. Calls in, calls missed, after hours, cancellations left unfilled. Nothing is switched on yet, because once it is, your before number is gone forever.
- Days 3 to 7, I write your twenty answers with you, load the waitlist rules, and set up call forwarding on ring-out. About an hour of your time in total.
- Days 8 to 10, your own staff test it. They ring the practice, do not answer, and read what the patient would have got. Wording gets changed until reception is happy with it.
- Day 14, live. Thirty days later you get the first report, in person if I am in the country and on a call if I am not.
Who I am
I am Oliver Žaigla. I build AI systems and websites, I have been working out of East Hills, and these are two local builds you can open on your phone right now. They are websites rather than phone systems, so treat them as evidence that things get finished and not as a claim about dentistry.
FAQ
Our phone always gets answered.+
Then this is not for you and I will say so. Before you decide, ask your phone provider for the missed and abandoned call report for last month, and look at what happens between 12:30 and 1:30 and after five. Nearly every practice I have rung in this area rings out at least once in a working week, and none of them knew it.
Does it need access to our practice software?+
No, and I would rather it stayed that way in the first version. It works alongside your system by text message. Booking requests arrive in reception's inbox and a human puts them in the diary. That keeps your clinical data where it is, keeps your software vendor out of it, and is the reason this takes two weeks.
What does the patient actually see?+
A text from your practice number, in your practice's words, within about thirty seconds of their call going unanswered. Most people reply. If they ask something clinical the reply tells them a member of the team will call, and your staff get told immediately. Nobody is told they are talking to a robot dressed as a receptionist, and nobody is pretended into thinking it is a person either.
Is text messaging our patients legal?+
Replying to someone who has just rung your practice is consented contact under the Spam Act, and every message carries your identity and a way to stop. Your waitlist is people who asked to be told about earlier slots. What we will not do is message your whole patient database, because that is the part that gets practices in trouble and it is not what this is for.
What happens if it says something wrong?+
It answers from a fixed list of your answers, not from whatever it feels like saying. Anything outside that list, and anything clinical, becomes a message to your staff instead of a reply to the patient. During the first week you see every conversation, and you can tell me to change the wording as often as you like.
Twelve months feels long.+
It is, and it is deliberate, because a system like this pays for itself over a year and not over a fortnight. What I will do is show you the numbers at day thirty. If it has not recovered more than it cost by then, that is the conversation to have, and I would rather have it early and honestly than hold you to a term you resent.
Tell me your practice name and roughly when your phone is busiest. I will ring it a few times over a couple of days, tell you honestly what happened, and if it never rings out I will tell you that too and leave you alone.
Email me