Missed calls at your dental practice: how to find them and fix them

Every practice misses some calls. The useful question is when, and what happens next. This guide covers free fixes first, then the options if you want to automate. Use the calculator to estimate the value with your own numbers.

1. Find out when you miss calls

Export a week from your phone system. Look at missed calls by hour. Note opening, lunch and the last hour.

2. Fixes that cost nothing

Stagger lunch. Move outgoing admin calls, such as claims and callbacks, out of the peak hour. Give voicemail one instruction (name, number, "tell us if you're in pain"). Have one named person own callbacks at a fixed time.

3. After hours

Fixed wording for emergencies, pointing to your arrangements (UK: NHS 111 in England, or your on-call service, and 999 in a life-threatening emergency; AU: healthdirect or your on-call, and 000; NZ: Healthline or your on-call, and 111). Capture everyone else's details for the morning.

4. Text-back and booking links

If your phone system supports it, and in line with your local consent rules.

5. When to consider an answering service or AI receptionist

Questions to ask any provider:

• Does it say it's an AI?
• Does it ever give clinical advice?
• What happens when the calendar is unavailable?
• Who gets urgent calls?
• When someone asks for a person, what happens? (Ours takes a message and your team calls back; there's no live transfer.)

Hear how an AI receptionist answers a call

Phone answering is included in the pilot and the Upgrade plan; Base covers WhatsApp and web chat.

Written by Frontdesk Agents. We build an AI receptionist for clinics, so steps 1–4 are free and step 5 is where we come in.