Your dental practice answers every patient, even at 8 pm

What it does in a dental practice

Reception closes in the evening; the practice’s WhatsApp doesn’t. At eight at night in come the new patients who’ve been putting it off for weeks, the ‘can I move Tuesday?’ messages and the usual questions: do you take my insurance, where can I park, how long is a hygiene appointment. The next morning, reception starts the day with a pile of overdue messages and the phone ringing at the same time. And the patient who wrote last night about a first appointment may, if nobody replied, already have booked at another practice.

Conserjía answers that WhatsApp with the practice’s real diary, in under a minute and at any hour:

• New patients. It asks what kind of appointment they need, offers two slots with the right dentist and puts the appointment in the diary. If you take a deposit for new-patient appointments, it collects it in the chat, by card (or Bizum in Spain).
• Check-ups and changes. The patient who can’t make it says so when they remember, even at eleven at night. The assistant frees their slot and gives them another, with no phone calls and no waiting.
• Reminder the day before. With a reply: confirm, move or cancel. A WhatsApp appointment reminder works because it asks for an answer, and whoever isn’t coming says so in time.
• Slots that fill again. When someone cancels, the slot is free in the diary from that moment, and the assistant offers it to whoever asks for an appointment around those days.
• The usual questions. Opening hours, how to get there, parking, which insurers or dental plans you work with, whether you’re taking on new patients, prices for whatever you choose to publish. With your information and nothing else.

Each dentist and hygienist has their own diary, their own days and a set length for each type of appointment. The assistant won’t offer a new-patient exam in a fifteen-minute slot, or a hygiene appointment with someone who doesn’t do them.

What it doesn’t do

In a practice, what the assistant doesn’t do matters as much as what it does:

• It doesn’t diagnose or advise. It won’t say something ‘sounds like a cavity’, what to take for the pain or what treatment is needed.
• It doesn’t assess emergencies. If a patient describes severe pain, a knock to the mouth or swelling, it passes them to the person you’ve chosen or gives them the practice’s number; if nobody is there, the emergency number.
• It doesn’t quote for treatment. A treatment plan comes out of the surgery, not the chat.
• It doesn’t replace reception. Any patient can type ‘person’ and someone on the team will look after them.

Anything a patient writes to a dental practice can be health data, which the GDPR protects as special category data. Conserjía handles it as the regulation requires, and how it does so is set out in the privacy policy (in Spanish).

A day with Conserjía

At nine, reception opens with the diary up to date. The new patient who wrote in at 22:40 is booked in with their dentist. Tuesday’s check-up that was moved last night is already in its new slot, and the old one is free for another patient. Nobody had to catch up on the phone to find that out. And the question a patient left at midnight, which only the dentist can answer, is waiting as an alert with the conversation attached.

During the morning, WhatsApp gets answered while reception deals with the desk and the phone. What the assistant shouldn’t handle (a quote, a complaint, a patient in pain) reaches a person with the conversation in front of them, so no message is left unanswered. In the afternoon the reminders go out for tomorrow’s appointments, and the replies go back into the diary on their own: whoever confirms is confirmed, whoever needs to move is rebooked and whoever cancels leaves a slot that can be given to someone else.

When you close, you have a sheet with what happened: how many conversations, how many new appointments, how many changes, how many deposits taken and which ones went to a person, and why. Once a month we go through it with you, with figures, to adjust whatever needs it: an appointment length that’s too short, a question the assistant couldn’t answer, a dentist whose hours are changing.

The assistant introduces itself as an AI assistant in its first message, as required under EU law (AI Act, art. 50), and always offers to put the patient through to someone on the team. Conversations are hosted in the European Union (the language model is a processor in the United States under standard contractual clauses), and the WhatsApp account belongs to the practice, in its name.

Who it’s for

For dental practices with one or more surgeries and a reception that can’t keep up: the same person answers the phone, takes payments, looks after the desk and also checks WhatsApp. Also for small medical practices with their own diary and the same problem at nine at night.

If your practice gets few messages and reception answers them the same day, you don’t need it: a good away message outside opening hours and a clear routine for customer service on WhatsApp will do. If what you lose is calls, look at the voice assistant, which answers the phone with the same diary. If it’s messages, book a demo: it’s a 30-minute video call, we reply in under 24 working hours and set-up takes three weeks.