Where it started
ClĂnica Santa Maria dos Olivais is a dental practice in Lisbon: six dentists, each with their own specialties and their own days, and a single receptionist. For a practice like that, the phone is everything. People who can’t get through often don’t call back. They try the next dentist.
Nobody was counting how many calls went unanswered before. The clinic’s own estimate is around ten a day.
The problem wasn’t the technology. It was trust. The owner didn’t want an AI on the phone with her patients, and who could blame her? If the assistant gets it wrong, she’s the one who looks bad.
We started small
We didn’t try to win her over with a pitch deck. At first, the voice assistant only answered the number from the clinic’s ads. People calling that number have already seen the ad and know what they want. If anything went wrong, we could switch it off in an afternoon without anyone at the clinic noticing.
Then she trusted it
In May the assistant answered 34 calls a month. By August, 275.
It didn’t get eight times better. In June the owner trusted us enough to hand it all over to the system: the assistant’s number went live on Google Maps, the one anyone searching for the clinic finds.
The numbers
Production data, February 1 to September 9, 2026.
- 527Wrapped up by the assistant60%
- 223Passed to the front desk26%
- 122Hung up within 10 seconds14%
| Calls received by the assistant | 872 |
| Wrapped up by the assistant, never reaching the front desk | 527 |
| Passed to the front desk | 223 |
| Hung up within 10 seconds | 122 |
| Appointments booked | 114 |
| Came in after hours or while another call was in progress | 193 (22%) |
| Different people it spoke with | 385 |
| Average conversation length | 1 minute 37 seconds |
| Hours of phone time handled | 20.2 |
Six languages, and it switches on its own
Lisbon is a multicultural capital, and Portuguese alone doesn’t cover everyone who calls. The assistant can answer in European Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish, French and German, and in other languages too if needed.
How it does it matters more than the list. Every call starts in Portuguese. If the caller switches language, or asks for another one, the assistant switches too, in its very next reply. It doesn’t announce it, doesn’t ask permission, and doesn’t transfer the call.
Just finding a free slot was a job in itself
Six dentists, none of them full-time. They work split half-days and each one does different things: orthodontics only on Wednesdays, pediatric dentistry only on Tuesdays, root canals on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and implants follow the clinical director’s schedule.
| Treatment | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orthodontics | no | no | no | no | |
| Pediatric dentistry | no | no | no | no | |
| Root canals | no | no | |||
| Implants | no |
That means some treatments exist on a single day of the week. Finding the first free slot isn’t a matter of checking the calendar. Four things have to line up: the treatment, a dentist who does it, a day that dentist is in, and a slot still open that day.
Before any of that, the assistant has to work out what the caller needs. Nobody on the phone says “endodontics”. They say it hurts, a crown fell off, they want braces or a cleaning. There are twenty-one treatment types to recognize from everyday speech, because that word decides which dentist the patient sees. That’s exactly where the system slipped once: the word “assessment” covered too much and sent patients to the wrong dentist.
How it looks for a slot
- It always offers exactly two times. Never one, never a list.
- If neither works, it looks for two more further ahead, and never offers a rejected time again.
- If the calendar returns the same times, earlier times or nothing, it treats that as a logical failure and stops after two attempts.
- Then it stops pushing. During opening hours it passes the call to the front desk; after hours it offers a callback.
A system that keeps querying a full calendar until something turns up is the easiest thing to build, and the worst thing to put on a phone line.
Emergencies, where it has to say something uncomfortable
The clinic works by appointment only and has no emergency slots. When the assistant picks up on severe pain, a broken tooth, swelling or bleeding, it doesn’t promise anything. It acknowledges the problem in one sentence, explains that the first slot could be tomorrow or a week away, and offers two options: the first available slot, or the front desk if the clinic is open.
Promising a same-day slot to someone in pain is easy to program and impossible to keep. That’s the difference between a demo and a system that has been live for seven months.
When it hands the call to a person, and why
About one call in four, 223 out of 872, ends up with the receptionist. That isn’t the assistant giving up: it doesn’t transfer people just because they ask. It asks why they’re calling first, and if it’s something it can handle, it tries to handle it. It only transfers if the caller insists.
| Reason | Calls |
|---|---|
| Insists on a person, after the assistant tried to help | 111 |
| Implant cleaning: clinic policy says only the front desk books it | 26 |
| Doesn’t want the call recorded | 25 |
| Emergency or pain | 21 |
| Couldn’t be classified | 40 |
Classified automatically from call summaries, so treat these as indicative.
Everything else it handles on its own, including cancelling and rescheduling appointments, the two things most people assume need a human.
There’s one more case that exists but can’t be counted: the assistant offers times, the caller turns them down one after another, and after a few tries the call goes to the front desk. It shows up too rarely in the summaries to put a number on it.
What we got wrong, and fixed
If we only told you what went well, it would be an ad.
- The word “assessment” in the appointment menu was too vague, and the assistant booked patients with the wrong dentist. We caught it on the second complaint.
- When someone asked to speak to a person, the line the assistant used to reassure them mentioned that it was an AI, and planted exactly the doubt it was meant to remove. We rewrote it to be neutral.
- The latest update went live on the third attempt. Our tests rejected the first two before they ever reached a real call.
What it brought in, as an estimate
Only the clinic knows the real revenue, but an honest estimate is possible: for every appointment the assistant logged the treatment and whether the patient was new, and the price list says what each one costs.
If every implant consultation became treatment: about €57,000
Estimate at list prices. Implant consultations are valued at the average of the clinic’s implant programme, about €2,200 each: from €745 for a single implant to €4,800 for a full arch. New patients’ first visit at €20, and no-shows are not subtracted.
In our view the number that matters most is a different one: 23 first visits for implants in seven months. It’s the most expensive part of the price list, and one of them turning into a full arch is worth almost €5,000.
Frequently asked questions
How many calls did the AI voice receptionist handle?
From February 1 to September 9, 2026 it answered 872 calls: 527 were wrapped up without reaching the front desk, 223 were passed to the receptionist and 122 were hung up within the first 10 seconds. It booked 114 appointments.
Which languages does it speak?
It can answer in European Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish, French and German, and in other languages too if needed. Every call starts in Portuguese, and if the caller uses another language the assistant switches in its next reply, without transferring the call.
What happens when a patient calls with an emergency?
The clinic has no emergency slots, and the assistant doesn’t promise any. It acknowledges the problem, explains that the first slot could be tomorrow or a week away, and offers the first available slot or the front desk if the clinic is open.
When does it hand the call to a person?
When the caller insists on a person after the assistant has tried to help, for implant cleanings, when someone doesn’t want the call recorded, and for emergencies. That happened on 223 calls out of 872.
Where should you start with an AI voice receptionist?
In our view, with a single line, the way we did here with the ads number: if something goes wrong you switch it off in an afternoon, and if it works you expand it.
The close
If you run a clinic or a practice, the question isn’t whether AI can answer your phone. It’s which part of your phone to start it on.
If you’d like to see how it works before we talk, here’s how the AI voice receptionist works.
Thirty minutes, and we’ll tell you where we’d start.