Your Missed Calls Are Costing You (E.333)

“Missing one phone call is too many.” – Adrian Lefler

Adrian Lefler is the CEO and Co-Founder of My Social Practice. With 16 years in dental digital marketing, Adrian has spent his career helping dental practices and their teams improve how they connect with patients, communicate online, and grow through smarter marketing systems.

In this episode, Adrian brings that experience into one of the most important conversations happening in dentistry right now: how practices can use AI to protect missed opportunities, support the front office, and create a better patient experience.

Brief Overview of the Episode

Dental practices spend real money to make the phone ring.

They invest in websites, Google Ads, social media, treatment campaigns, and new patient marketing. But if the call goes unanswered, if the patient reaches voicemail, or if follow-up happens too late, that opportunity may be gone.

Adrian explains why AI reception tools are becoming a practical solution for dental teams that are tired of missing calls, losing leads, and stretching the front office too thin.

The point is not to remove the human side of dentistry. The point is to protect it.

When AI can help with repetitive questions, scheduling, rescheduling, chat, and missed-call capture, the team gets more space to do what humans do best: build trust, serve patients, and create a better in-office experience.

What This Episode Reveals

Most practices are focused on getting more leads.

But a bigger problem may already be sitting inside the practice.

A missed call is not just a missed call. It may be a patient who was ready to schedule, a treatment opportunity that never reached the calendar, or a marketing dollar that ended in voicemail.

This episode reveals why call capture is now part of the growth conversation. Patients expect speed, simplicity, and fewer barriers. When the practice cannot respond quickly, many patients do not wait.

They move on.

What You’ll Learn

• Why missed calls are a bigger problem now than they were five years ago
• How voicemail can quietly turn patient interest into lost opportunity
• Why speed-to-lead matters when a patient is ready to take action
• How AI can support the front office without replacing the team

If This Sounds Familiar

Your team is helping the patient standing in front of them.

The phone rings.

A new patient is ready to schedule.

No one is available to answer.

By the time your team calls back, that patient may have already found another practice.

This is the reality many practices are living in every day. The front office is not lazy. The team is not uncaring. They are busy, interrupted, and expected to handle more than one person can reasonably manage at once.

That creates a gap between marketing and scheduling.

And that gap costs practices real patients.

Next Steps

Start by looking at what happens after the phone rings.

Review how many calls are missed, how many patients are sent to voicemail, and how quickly new patient inquiries are contacted. Then look at how many of those opportunities turn into scheduled and kept appointments.

From there, evaluate the systems around your front office.

• Can patients get help when your team is unavailable?
• Can scheduling questions be handled without creating more work?
• Can your team see what happened after a missed call?
• Can your practice protect the leads your marketing already created?

The goal is not more noise.

The goal is fewer missed opportunities and a better patient experience from the first moment someone reaches out.

 

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Transcript

00:00:00:04 – 00:00:03:00
Speaker 1
The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network.

00:00:03:02 – 00:00:19:15
Adrian Lefler
Is still missing too many phone calls. I mean, missing one phone calls, too many. But it’s closer. It’s around 2,535%. Frost the board. The reason why it feels so relevant is because there is technology that can solve the problem now.

00:00:19:16 – 00:00:36:18
Speaker 3
Thanks for tuning in to the Everyday Practices Dental podcast I’m Ragan Robertson. My co-host Sara Hansen, and I interview real dentists and experts who grow their dental practices using authentic marketing in a way that you can remember, repeat, and use in your own practice to get the patients you deserve. Let’s dive in.

00:00:36:23 – 00:00:59:02
Sara Hansen
Doctors. You know, one of the things that we talk about all the time on this podcast is marketing. And of course, we talk about websites, Google ads, new patient campaigns, all the things that we do to make the phone ring. But what happens when the phone actually rings? Because here’s the reality. A patient can be completely ready to schedule.

00:00:59:05 – 00:01:21:19
Sara Hansen
They finally decide to call and no one answers. They get a voicemail and most people don’t even leave one. They just simply move on. And that’s scary because the practice may never even know that that opportunity existed. So today, on Everyday Dental Practices podcast, we’re talking about something that I think a lot of doctors don’t realize they’re dealing with.

00:01:21:20 – 00:01:44:11
Sara Hansen
It may not be a marketing problem at all. It may actually be a capture problem. And joining me today is Adrian Lefler from my social practice. Adrian, I’m excited for this conversation because I think this is something practices are filling every day, but maybe a lot of them don’t have the language for it. So welcome, Adrian.

00:01:44:13 – 00:01:46:04
Adrian Lefler
Well thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

00:01:46:05 – 00:02:02:20
Sara Hansen
Appreciate it. Yeah. And of course also joining today is a fan favorite of the podcast, Matt Hutchings. He is our producer and digital media manager at Phoenix Dental Agency. So welcome mat as well.

00:02:02:22 – 00:02:08:08
Matt Hutchings
Yeah. Always fun to get pulled out from behind the curtain to come on.

00:02:08:10 – 00:02:26:11
Sara Hansen
Talk all things marketing. Well hey Adrian. So practices have always missed calls here or there, right? We know that this is nothing new to dentistry, but why do you think it feels like such a bigger issue today than it did five years ago?

00:02:26:13 – 00:02:55:22
Adrian Lefler
Well. Practice is still missing too many phone calls. I mean, missing one, phone calls, too many. But it’s closer. It’s around 25, 35% across the board. The reason why it feels so relevant is because there’s technology that can solve the problem now, where there wasn’t really great technology to solve the problem five years ago. Yeah. And so this is becoming kind of a hot topic.

00:02:55:24 – 00:03:25:11
Adrian Lefler
I just went to a dental event, the aDSL event, which is a like a group DSO event. Great event. And the entire event, I would say probably 70% of the conversations. The breakout sessions, the stuff from the stage. It was all about AI and trying to tackle this, this issue of like, how do we solve problems with AI?

00:03:25:13 – 00:03:50:21
Adrian Lefler
How do we get our teams to function properly with AI? Is it hype? Is it not hype? You know, I mean, it’s all kind of like being discovered and trying to figure out at this point. And to your question, there are very, very great solutions now that function extremely well to solve the missed call phone problem with AI.

00:03:50:23 – 00:04:07:09
Sara Hansen
Yeah. So will you talk to us a little bit about my social practice. And you guys obviously saw this this happening in the dental industry. So what are some of those solutions that you have found to help dental teams.

00:04:07:11 – 00:04:34:11
Adrian Lefler
Well, we’re not alone in this. I mean, we’re talking because this is a problem across the board. And all dental marketing companies are trying to figure out a healthy solution. So a little bit of background to give context and why we got involved with an AI employee or AI receptionist. I launched a chat product like a web chat product like four years ago.

00:04:34:12 – 00:04:54:07
Adrian Lefler
And, and the reason I launched is, you know, this is just basically put a chat on, on a dental practice website because we know and you know that like, I don’t know, it’s like two thirds of, of, of consumers prefer to chat rather than make a phone call. Right. Yeah. So we’re like well we got to get chat on these websites.

00:04:54:07 – 00:05:14:19
Adrian Lefler
And I did some research. I looked at like 1500. This is my own personal. I just randomly looked like 1500 dental practices. And the last then I think it was 17% of them had chat on their website. And when I looked at the actual functionality of the chat, it wasn’t chat. Most of them were just forms. It was just like a little pop up with a form.

00:05:14:19 – 00:05:36:05
Adrian Lefler
It wasn’t actually a chat functionality. It was like less than 3 to 5% of the practices had an actual chat function. So I was like, dude, we’ve got to get chat on these websites because, you know, just like you guys, we’re driving all this traffic to the website. Yeah. And, you know, these, these weird younger generations, like my kids, they won’t make a phone call.

00:05:36:06 – 00:05:55:03
Adrian Lefler
They’re freaking weird, right? So it’s like, if you don’t put chat on the site, you’re going to miss out on, like, on all those businesses. So. So we had a chat. We had a chat to like, a whole bunch of sites in every single one of the practices called us back and said, take this damn thing off. We cannot handle all the chats.

00:05:55:09 – 00:06:05:11
Adrian Lefler
And I was like, oh, well, I didn’t think that that was going to be the problem. I didn’t realize that the problem wasn’t going to be not enough chats. It was going to be too many.

00:06:05:12 – 00:06:07:03
Sara Hansen
Right. Abundance.

00:06:07:05 – 00:06:36:13
Adrian Lefler
Yeah. So I thought, oh, okay. We’re dealing with a team issue here. We’re dealing with an internal process problem. So I dumped the project and then ChatGPT came out in November 2022 and I went, oh, oh wait a minute. Here we go. Okay. If we can train an AI to handle conversations and train it to overcome objections and maybe connect it with the practice management system, we’ve got something that could actually work because it wouldn’t.

00:06:36:14 – 00:06:56:16
Adrian Lefler
It could pick up all the chats and you could schedule and it would it would do it. It wouldn’t have to. There’s no extra work for the team. So we started developing this and I was doing it myself. And I am not a developer. And I got something that was working pretty well. And then I realized I’m really not a developer.

00:06:56:16 – 00:07:28:04
Adrian Lefler
And so I dumped the project and we invested in a company to help build this AI chat, which eventually became a phone assistant in a receptionist. So. So I got into it from the angle of like, we got we got to solve chat. And once you once you train an AI to handle a conversation, like once you give a personality and you give the the context and the history and the information and the sales capabilities to a chat, all you got to do is tie it to a voice.

00:07:28:04 – 00:07:43:19
Adrian Lefler
And now you got a voice agent, right? So that’s how we got into it. And that’s how Annie. That’s how we got involved with Annie AI. So we use Annie as our AI employee or AI receptionist for our dental clients.

00:07:43:21 – 00:08:15:15
Sara Hansen
I love that, you know, when people hear AI, they immediately think replacement. Or, you know, I’m at a job, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. You know, we’re talking about the repetitive things that AI can actually handle to free the the team up right, to do, really what our humans do best. So can you talk a little bit about that, about it’s not here to replace but really help enhance the front office team.

00:08:15:17 – 00:08:52:21
Adrian Lefler
So human beings are right in the throes of trying to figure out how to actually have a healthy relationship with AI. And it’s kind of a bizarre, uncanny valley kind of place to be. I could tell you that all of the research reports over the last year that I’ve read independent studies from big companies that do this, kind of, this psychoanalytical analysis of of consumers and whatnot and businesses, a lot of them are saying that the number one reason that AI is not being adopted is because of sabotage, employee sabotage.

00:08:52:22 – 00:09:15:11
Adrian Lefler
So I think because we don’t understand the limits of what AI can do, and there’s a and the front end marketing from AI companies is AI can do everything. It’s going to replace all the workforce. And they do that because they have to have a message that that that is, that is validating to the investments that they’ve received.

00:09:15:13 – 00:09:45:05
Adrian Lefler
Right. So these big AI companies are like raising hundreds of millions, billions of dollars to launch these products. They have to have a claim that is strong enough and validating enough for the investment to make sense, to continually raise money. So there’s a messaging that’s coming out that is kind of terrifying, that AI is going to replace all work and everybody’s going to be out of work, you know, and robots are going to run everything.

00:09:45:07 – 00:10:22:24
Adrian Lefler
That’s not what’s happening in real life. Okay. What we’re seeing is we’re seeing the kind of the integration of AI into work processes and teams and so forth. And it is very much a human in the loop kind of a process. Yeah. So, so when, when I just to give you kind of back that up, you know we have we have been building out AI kind of infused internal processes to do our marketing for the past 2 or 3 years to streamline and speed things up and whatnot and make the product better and so forth.

00:10:23:00 – 00:10:41:11
Adrian Lefler
And I’ll tell you, every time that we launch with things, my own employees freak out. The first question I usually get is like, hey, Adriana, you for a second, and I get on a call, they’re like, I’m I on the chopping block. You know? I’m like, no, no, no no no. Calm down. You know, people are freaked out and so and so it’s and it’s across the board.

00:10:41:11 – 00:10:49:10
Adrian Lefler
So in a dental office okay. You have and we can talk specifically about the phone problem. Yes.

00:10:49:10 – 00:10:50:07
Matt Hutchings
Okay.

00:10:50:09 – 00:11:14:19
Adrian Lefler
You got a front desk operator and they I’ve I’ve seen statistics from consultants. You guys might have a really good idea on this, but a significant portion of their time, the front desk is handling phone calls, scheduling, rescheduling, billing, that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah. I mean, like, I don’t know I don’t know the numbers. I did actually interview with some consultants, a few different consultants, and they gave me all different.

00:11:14:19 – 00:11:34:01
Adrian Lefler
I was like 20 to 50% of all their time. It was just like answering the phone, right? Yes. So if you have a front desk person whose job is primarily or fundamentally part of their job is answering the phone, and you say, we got an AI receptionist who’s going to start answering the phone? They’re like, well, what the hell am I going to do?

00:11:34:03 – 00:12:05:01
Adrian Lefler
Right. They’re going to freak out. So we have to be really, really, really careful about helping our teams to understand the, the, the actually the actual real capabilities of what AI can and can’t do. Because what’s happening is, is when you inject AI into any kind of a process, what happens is the human kind of levels up a little bit, or needs to level up to have oversight over what the AI is doing.

00:12:05:03 – 00:12:14:11
Adrian Lefler
So the AI ends up doing a lot of the like, repetitive, like shit work. Let’s be honest, the stuff that we’re just like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to click this button again kind.

00:12:14:11 – 00:12:14:20
Matt Hutchings
Of thing.

00:12:14:22 – 00:12:15:14
Sara Hansen
Yeah.

00:12:15:15 – 00:12:36:14
Adrian Lefler
Yeah, I can do all of that. But you have to have a human being monitoring it, right. But when you when you set that, when you layer it like that, you actually get your productivity goes way up. You can get a lot more done. So so I don’t know. That was a long response to your question. But the issue is, is like, yeah, there’s there’s sabotage.

00:12:36:16 – 00:12:56:19
Adrian Lefler
But I think that the sabotage is happening because there’s an undue amount of anxiety around AI. But the reality is, is that we we are going to work very closely with AI and people will. I think more jobs will be created rather than than losing jobs or better jobs, I should say.

00:12:56:21 – 00:13:21:00
Matt Hutchings
So when you talk about the the AI and having that person, you know, overlook it, like let’s say the front desk, you know, can you talk about if the AI is able to pull off some of those repetitive tasks? Right. If the AI, because you said it’s able to book, it’s able to, you know, maybe put it in different areas of where that person would look.

00:13:21:02 – 00:13:38:02
Matt Hutchings
So are you saying with that the AI can take off, maybe some of those early administrative tasks and then the front desk now can get more into action as opposed to filtering through, you know, some of the higher level things that that may be coming through.

00:13:38:04 – 00:14:01:12
Adrian Lefler
Yeah. Yeah. So let me, let me, let me answer that a couple of ways. Okay. So first of all the capabilities. So if we’re talking about a front and like a receptionist, an AI receptionist, somebody who’s answering your calls, you have to talk. You have to understand the capabilities of a particular AI software in order to answer that question.

00:14:01:16 – 00:14:27:09
Adrian Lefler
So there’s a lot of products in the market. And there’s there’s literally like, I have been tracking how many new AI receptionists that come on in the market. It’s been like 100 companies in the last year. It’s freaking like everybody is jumping into it. So when you start looking across the expanse of all these companies and this dental AI receptionist, you have to look at what what’s actually being delivered.

00:14:27:10 – 00:14:58:18
Adrian Lefler
Everybody says it’s AI, but that doesn’t mean that one AI is the same as another because the capabilities might be significantly different. Okay. So I’ll give you an example. And this goes to your question Matt. So if if your AI has practice management integration okay. So the AI can actually read the schedule. It can actually read notes inside of your patient management system.

00:14:58:19 – 00:15:20:15
Adrian Lefler
Okay. Then that AI has the capability to do a whole hell of a lot more. So for example, an AI that doesn’t have practice management integration versus one that does patient calls in AI picks up the phone, patient says, I’d like to schedule an appointment, and the AI can’t read the schedule so it doesn’t know what opens slots there are.

00:15:20:16 – 00:15:37:12
Adrian Lefler
So what the AI does is just gets their information. Oh, that’d be great. We’d love to schedule you. I’m going to have Susie from the office give you a call back, but let’s let me grab your name, your email, your phone, your insurance information. I’ll send them a message, and then they’ll call you back and schedule. That’s basically what happens.

00:15:37:13 – 00:16:03:09
Adrian Lefler
Right. Because you can’t schedule directly if you don’t have practice, you don’t have the API integration of the PMS. So versus an agent that can patient calls in, they want to schedule it’s booked. Everything’s booked. So the difference in the task is this the non integrated AI agent has to send an email or a text to the team.

00:16:03:13 – 00:16:28:04
Adrian Lefler
And it’s performing and acting kind of in the same way as voicemail. You’re just getting the information. And then the team has to actually review the information call follow up schedule. So there’s those tasks that are still required by the team member. But if the agent can schedule then the task the team member isn’t. You need to call them and schedule.

00:16:28:04 – 00:16:45:09
Adrian Lefler
The task is you should probably call this patient. They’re a new patient they’ve just scheduled. You might want to just call them and say hello. Oh, you know, introduce the human being at the office. So if you want to do that right. But you don’t, you wouldn’t have to have that step. But that might be a nice step.

00:16:45:09 – 00:17:09:16
Adrian Lefler
So it’s a different task, right. So when you ask the question Matt, like, well where is the AI. Like like what work is it actually taking care of? It depends on the capabilities of the actual agent. And those skills are getting better and better and capabilities are getting better and better every week, it seems like. So go ahead.

00:17:09:17 – 00:17:37:10
Matt Hutchings
Yeah, yeah. One one. So if I’m a dentist and you know, I’m saying now I’m giving you access to my patient data where I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I got to protect this. I’ve got all these HIPAA, you know, things that now I’ve gone trained, tell us, like, you know, why and what precautions being that you’re in dentistry that like, you know, if they’re investigating a third party company that just says, hey, I’m AI, you know, we’re front desk versus, you know, all of those extra pieces.

00:17:37:10 – 00:17:43:22
Matt Hutchings
What are what are some of those things? And what would you tell the doctor on his dentistry? It’s it’s it’s his own animal. Right.

00:17:44:01 – 00:18:08:19
Adrian Lefler
Yeah. So there’s, there’s a few there’s a few questions that a dentist would want to ask. And these are the same questions that I asked is I was like evaluating like initially the products that were on the market to build a chat agent as well as when we got to the point of like this, that any starting to take phone calls, I was actually still like looking to see what was on the market.

00:18:08:19 – 00:18:21:22
Adrian Lefler
So these are the questions that I ask. Okay. Number one, does the company sign a bar as standard? You have to do that. If they don’t have that in place that’s a red flag for sure. Okay.

00:18:21:23 – 00:18:22:18
Sara Hansen
Right.

00:18:22:20 – 00:18:50:00
Adrian Lefler
To are they SOC to compliant. That’s SOC two is a cybersecurity certification that a company goes through. There’s one SoC one and SOC two. And everybody to to protect your booty in this. You want to you want to try and work with a company that definitely has SOC one and is either SOC two or working on SOC two, okay.

00:18:50:01 – 00:19:16:13
Adrian Lefler
It’s a process where a software company is actually they have to hire an independent like hacker to try and hack their system. Right. And there’s a whole industry around this. And so you want to work towards that, because if not, the software company might be some 45 year old dude in his underwear living in his mom’s basement building stuff over the weekend.

00:19:16:13 – 00:19:31:00
Adrian Lefler
And you have no idea where the data is being stored and you’re talking about fi. You’re gonna have a lot of problems on your hand. So you want to look for security. Okay, you also want to look for.

00:19:31:02 – 00:19:59:07
Adrian Lefler
The PMS integration. Okay. And in that integration, you you want to work with a company who has direct integration with the PMS company. What that means is that if a practice has den tricks, okay, that’s their PMS. The software company has a relationship with Henry Shine and is able to access the data on a in a white hat methodology.

00:19:59:07 – 00:20:22:15
Adrian Lefler
They’re going directly to Henry Shine. They’re paying Henry Shine for the for the access. And they’ve just it’s clean if if they’re using some kind of other kind of tricky way to get to the data without just paying Eagle Soft or Henry Shine, then you run into maybe not cybersecurity issues, but you run into issues with Henry Shine or Eagle Soft.

00:20:22:18 – 00:20:46:19
Adrian Lefler
Right? So you want to work with somebody who has direct integrations with their PMS. So I would say those those are 3 or 4 primary kind of questions you want to ask. And they’re kind of super technical, but you weed out a lot of a lot of people, a lot of companies that haven’t really built this appropriately. You know, Henry like working with Henry Shine.

00:20:46:21 – 00:21:05:20
Adrian Lefler
They’re not cheap. You pay Henry, you’re not a lot of money for integrations. You guys probably pay for integrations with Henry Shine. And I’m telling you, it’s like it’s, you know, no. Tom, Dick and Harry that’s just spun up. An AI company is going to have the capital to start working directly with Henry Shine. They just won’t do it.

00:21:05:20 – 00:21:21:14
Adrian Lefler
They’ll try and figure out a sneaky way to get the data. So you want to work with somebody who is on the approved list at Henry or on the approved list? It will soft or whoever it might be. I think those are some some really like early steps that are super helpful.

00:21:21:16 – 00:21:53:23
Sara Hansen
Yeah. So you want to go back to our voicemail question. And you know, I’ve heard some practices say, you know, hey, if it’s that important, the patient will leave a message. And what we know is that voicemail is not really a safety net anymore. If a patient can’t get Ahold of you, they’re going to be moving on. So how can the doctor, from your perspective, tell the difference between a marketing problem and a capture problem?

00:21:53:23 – 00:21:56:13
Sara Hansen
What’s the difference and how can they tell?

00:21:56:15 – 00:22:20:13
Adrian Lefler
All right. Cat marketing problem versus a capture problem. So let me back up one step really quick to kind of help bring some context to your question here at my social practice, the way that we use Annie has not been tied to marketing campaigns. What you guys are doing, I think is going to be really freaking cool. Yeah.

00:22:20:15 – 00:22:58:20
Adrian Lefler
I’m excited. So so we, we, we have basically used our AI age or Annie as the solution to missed phone calls. Okay, that was it. We just wanted to like let’s solve that problem. And it does solve that problem much better than a human and other other options on the market, right? Yeah. So rather than sending overflow calls to a human being, which I’ve tested, I just do not feel that a human being does as good of a job as an AI agent.

00:22:58:22 – 00:23:35:06
Adrian Lefler
Let me qualify that. If you’re sending leads or phone calls to a marketing company, okay, who has a live agent? Kind of. After hours. Yep. Versus an agent. The AI agent does better hands hand 100 times over. We could talk about that if you wanted to, but yeah, to your point, tying an AI agent to an actual marketing campaign, I think is is obviously the next step in this whole process and what you guys are planning on doing or what you’re testing right now is, I think is pretty sick.

00:23:35:07 – 00:23:44:03
Adrian Lefler
So to answer your question, because you’re asking a question more about marketing.

00:23:44:05 – 00:24:13:08
Adrian Lefler
I’ll give you my my best guess at what I think will happen with with with what you what you guys are doing in all of marketing. If if a if a consumer or patient in all dental marketing, dental marketing, when a consumer takes action on an advertisement, whether it’s a paid social ad for an Invisalign deal or to download something or whatever it might be, that the the speed to lead, the speed at.

00:24:13:08 – 00:24:13:19
Matt Hutchings
Which.

00:24:13:20 – 00:24:19:14
Adrian Lefler
That lead that patient gets a response is significant in terms of its conversion.

00:24:19:15 – 00:24:21:21
Sara Hansen
Exactly right.

00:24:21:22 – 00:24:46:17
Adrian Lefler
So a human being is going to delay on this. It’s going to be really it’s really, really hard to get a human being to see a lead form come through or something like that, and then immediately have the human being grab the lead and make the call and contact the potential patient. But an AI can do it like you just set the timer as soon as the button is hit.

00:24:46:18 – 00:25:08:24
Adrian Lefler
Five seconds later, a calls made or a text is sent or whatever. So that capability is like huge in terms of conversion. So I would say that AI solves a some of the marketing issues when you’re trying to manage it with human beings.

00:25:09:01 – 00:25:31:19
Sara Hansen
Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m seeing in dental practices right now is we have these amazing campaigns. You know, the doctor is investing in a marketing campaign that is driving the patients that they want. The patient calls. And again, the team is busy or it’s during lunch, or maybe they’re ending early on a Friday or whatever that looks like.

00:25:31:19 – 00:25:56:10
Sara Hansen
And now they have the quote unquote after hours, you know, just basic. Yeah, whoever pick up the phone and what I’m hearing on those phone calls are a person just answering the phone and then taking a message and said, well, I’ll I’ll have the team get back to you. Well, by the time the, you know, the team gets back to them, which is exactly what you’re talking about, is that person’s already moved on.

00:25:56:10 – 00:26:24:14
Sara Hansen
So now the doctor has paid the cost of acquisition for that lead to come in, and now it’s going nowhere. Right. And what I love about where AI is coming into this and, you know, we’re really passionate about and this is Matt has spoken about this a lot is what is our messaging what our you know, how are we showing up for the patient in the way that our key characteristics are woven into our messaging?

00:26:24:15 – 00:26:49:10
Sara Hansen
Now instead of having just, you know, whoever pick up the phone and say, well, they’ll call you back when they’re in the practice, now, you actually have a response, right, that you can train to say and answer how we want it to sound and look and, you know, and so now it’s like cutting out that missing piece that I think is really what we call in the marketing funnel, the make or break moment.

00:26:49:11 – 00:27:14:10
Sara Hansen
Right. And so I, I love that there is a solution because again now we’re talking about the phone calls are not going missed. And I like I can’t wait to get some data back on this as far as I want to know. Like you know, what is production growth or call conversion rate or whatever that looks like for the doctor, whatever metrics they’re tracking.

00:27:14:12 – 00:27:25:02
Sara Hansen
How is that actually growing the practice just by simply having now a solution to those calls? I think that that is fascinating.

00:27:25:02 – 00:27:47:22
Adrian Lefler
So yeah, let me let me riff on that for a second, because I think you brought up you brought up actually quite a, quite a lot there. So in terms of like, so in terms of using an AI to improve your marketing process, the speed to lead idea is, is one is one gap that can be solved with AI.

00:27:47:24 – 00:28:02:10
Adrian Lefler
But what you’re talking about is you’re talking about the actual interaction between like the phone interaction between a human being, a potential patient, and the AI. Let me let me tell you what I’ve seen. Okay.

00:28:02:11 – 00:28:04:13
Sara Hansen
Yeah.

00:28:04:15 – 00:28:30:11
Adrian Lefler
When I so in doing this, I would call, you know, kind of like a secret shopper, kind of like, you know, I would call company practices that had an offer after hours. Let the after hours, you know, sales team pick up the call. And then I would see how I would interact with them to see the quality of what I would, the quality of what was out there.

00:28:30:11 – 00:28:51:20
Adrian Lefler
Because the, the, the doctor only has a couple options if they’re running a marketing campaign, the call comes in and it gets missed. It goes to either voicemail and it’s going to go to a live agent somewhere. And that’s usually a marketing companies live agent. Okay, so the question I had was how good are the live agents that you hire?

00:28:51:20 – 00:29:27:17
Adrian Lefler
And I talked to quite a few. Okay. Yeah. And I am not throwing everybody under the bus because I’m sure that there are some great companies out there. But the vast majority of everybody that I dealt with was complete dog shit. Like, seriously the worst. It was literally no, no better than voicemail. You would call, you would say, hey, I got you guys do dental implants and they would say, hold on one second and then you’d have 15 second delay because the person on the other phone is managing 150 practices.

00:29:27:17 – 00:29:42:18
Adrian Lefler
They don’t know exactly. Know the information for the practice. It’s just that I’ve called in on. Right. Yeah. Then they get back to like, yes, we do dental implants. And I would say, well, how much is the cost? How much does it cost to get a dental implant. The press. Right. And they would be like, well, you know, they have usually have pretty good response.

00:29:42:19 – 00:30:00:12
Adrian Lefler
You know, you know we don’t want they don’t want to give the, the cost on the phone. And so they would do that. Right. But you know, would ask a question like, well how long how’s the doctor been doing this. And they don’t know. They have no idea. They don’t know where the practice is located. What if I want to just go in and talk to somebody?

00:30:00:14 – 00:30:13:21
Adrian Lefler
Like the limit to that conversation came out, came down to like, well, let me get your name, email and phone and I’ll have something from project call you back. What you just said. Okay. Yep. So so the problem with sorry was does that matter?

00:30:13:22 – 00:30:16:06
Matt Hutchings
Almost almost worse than voicemail at that point. Right.

00:30:16:07 – 00:30:17:17
Adrian Lefler
Because it’s frustrating.

00:30:17:20 – 00:30:19:01
Sara Hansen
Not they’re not helpful.

00:30:19:02 – 00:30:19:18
Matt Hutchings
Yeah. You think.

00:30:19:20 – 00:30:22:01
Adrian Lefler
The consumer’s expecting something more?

00:30:22:04 – 00:30:23:06
Sara Hansen
Yeah. Exactly.

00:30:23:08 – 00:30:28:02
Matt Hutchings
Someone in the practice who now knows nothing as opposed to just simple voicemail.

00:30:28:04 – 00:30:51:04
Adrian Lefler
So what an AI agent does in that specific issue. And this is really where I got super excited, like a couple years ago seeing this happen, I was like, oh shit, dude, and air is going to do better on the phone than a live person. And here’s why. Because the sales scripting, right? You can build that into the AI agents.

00:30:51:04 – 00:30:52:03
Adrian Lefler
Now if you have a.

00:30:52:03 – 00:30:52:22
Matt Hutchings
Script.

00:30:52:24 – 00:31:14:08
Adrian Lefler
If you if you know how to overcome objections, you have a script for it, you just build that right into the agent and it sticks to it and it doesn’t derail. Yeah, right. It doesn’t derail. It doesn’t have to. If I ask, well, how much does a dental implant cost? 3 to 4 times. The AI agent will always have a response that’s appropriate polite, firm.

00:31:14:09 – 00:31:41:10
Adrian Lefler
But like dodges giving the price. But with a human being you press they break down. Usually just give the price. Okay. So so so to your point of like is it a marketing problem? Is it a capture problem? It’s like there are pieces in this like lead generation funnel process that AI can solve much, much better than the current solutions.

00:31:41:15 – 00:32:02:05
Adrian Lefler
So so I think it’s probably, you know, there are problems on both ends in terms of the marketing versus like how good is the person that’s on the phone? Is it a capture issue? Is it the front desk person that’s the problem, right or the right or the marketing? The live agent marketing company that answers after hours calls?

00:32:02:05 – 00:32:10:17
Adrian Lefler
I think there’s problems across the board, but AI seems to solve a lot of those fills in a lot of those holes.

00:32:10:19 – 00:32:40:14
Sara Hansen
Yeah. What I love about this is it really is an extension. It’s a team member extension, right, of hey, I know our offices are busy. I know the phones are ringing. There are patients that need our full attention. And if to go back to what you said at the beginning, if I can have someone or something doing some of those mundane tasks like confirming appointments or, you know, answering simple questions, maybe a patient needs to reschedule their appointment.

00:32:40:15 – 00:33:13:06
Sara Hansen
What I love is that now, instead of me spending five ten minutes on the phone, now we have a software or Annie, as you would call it, that extension that can answer those simple questions. And now the team members are freed up to do really more patient, focused care and conversations. So I want to I want us to talk a little bit about the patient experience, and how does this make life easier for patients, and have you heard patients that are like, I don’t want AI, I want a real live person.

00:33:13:06 – 00:33:17:01
Sara Hansen
So I want us to speak a little bit about that patient side.

00:33:17:03 – 00:33:50:15
Adrian Lefler
Yeah. So let me answer the question about I don’t want to talk to the AI first. Okay. Yeah. This is a real issue. Okay. And people are still becoming familiar with dealing dealing with AI agents. And in the three years that I’ve kind of been involved in this, kind of this AI receptionist game, I have noticed generally that people are becoming very quickly, they’re just quickly becoming okay.

00:33:50:17 – 00:33:59:15
Adrian Lefler
They’re becoming okay with it. And a lot of that. Okay, nice. Like I’m already talking to an agent is because of the capabilities of the agents are getting better and better and better. Okay.

00:33:59:18 – 00:34:00:01
Matt Hutchings
Sorry.

00:34:00:02 – 00:34:08:22
Adrian Lefler
I’ll give you an example. I call Verizon, okay. Freaking hate calling Verizon. Okay.

00:34:08:23 – 00:34:10:07
Sara Hansen
I agree with you.

00:34:10:10 – 00:34:29:03
Adrian Lefler
Thank you, thank you. And it’s funny because like a couple of years, I remember doing this a few different times and recording the calls so that I could use it to kind of describe how AI should be better. Right? Like, you get stuck, you get stuck in these, like, phone trees where the a the it’s not an agent, it’s a voice assistant, you know.

00:34:29:04 – 00:34:51:15
Adrian Lefler
Yes. It gives you options and you never the option that you’re given is never the one that you need. And so you get stuck in a tree and it’s a loop. Yes. If, if there was an AI receptionist or customer service agent at Verizon that picked up the phone and said, hey, Adrian, how can I help you? And I said, look, I have a problem and I need to solve this problem.

00:34:51:15 – 00:35:00:03
Adrian Lefler
And the eight and the and the the ability of the agent to solve the problem if it was solvable. I don’t care if I’m talking.

00:35:00:03 – 00:35:00:11
Matt Hutchings
To an.

00:35:00:11 – 00:35:29:09
Adrian Lefler
AI agent or not, I don’t care. I just want my problem solved. Right? Yeah. The issue comes with there are a lot of AI agents because there’s still like in development that just don’t have the capabilities to do the things that need to be done. Right. So so that’s one issue is that I think as we get become more familiar with talking to AI and to the A’s capabilities, get more and more robust.

00:35:29:11 – 00:35:53:09
Adrian Lefler
The problem of I want to talk to a live person is going to go away generally. Okay, it might take a year or two. I mean, some people just want to talk to live, live people. And there’s just still it’s it’s freaky. It’s this idea of the uncanny valley where you’re like, I don’t know if I’m comfortable talking to or interacting with an AI because it doesn’t.

00:35:53:10 – 00:36:17:02
Adrian Lefler
It’s not real. It’s not human. It’s like it’s funky. It’s weird. Like people get an icky feeling sometimes. And that, I think, will work its way out in kind of human consciousness over the next few years. But it’s still there. I mean, yeah, I read the transcripts of patients that are calling into the practices that use Annie. And yeah, some are like, I just want to talk to live person.

00:36:17:05 – 00:36:39:01
Adrian Lefler
And and what we’ve done to handle that is we go, hey, no problem. Let me see if somebody is available and the agent can see if somebody is available. And if nobody is available, nobody’s available right now. That’s why I ended up picking up. But I would be happy to have somebody call you right back. You know, I mean, an appropriate way to handle that particular situation.

00:36:39:04 – 00:36:55:07
Adrian Lefler
But like it that that problem is not totally eradicated. People just are still uncomfortable talking to AI. Okay. Yeah. So that’s the first part of that question. And what was repeat your question again really quick because I had a second part. I forgot what I was going to say.

00:36:55:11 – 00:36:59:08
Sara Hansen
Yeah, it was really about how does this make life easier for.

00:36:59:08 – 00:37:24:00
Adrian Lefler
Patients rights okay. For patients okay. So so if the agent can function and and can solve the problem, it makes it easier. Okay. It just makes that process easier. If whether it’s chat or a phone it’s better. It’s better to call a dental practice and get an AI agent and solve your problem. Then get set to voicemail. That’s just better all around.

00:37:24:04 – 00:37:42:09
Adrian Lefler
Nobody wants to leave voicemails anymore. It’s a dead technology. Matter of fact, anybody listening to this? If you’re using voicemail, you have just make a plan to get rid of your voicemail in the next 90 days. You shouldn’t be using it. It’s a it’s a waste. It’s a total waste of time and money and energy. You just lose.

00:37:42:12 – 00:37:51:03
Adrian Lefler
The stats are super, super strong, like three quarters of everybody that gets sent to voicemail. They don’t even leave voicemails anymore.

00:37:51:05 – 00:37:52:21
Sara Hansen
Nope. They move on.

00:37:52:23 – 00:38:18:02
Adrian Lefler
They move on. And if it’s a new patient calling it seven, they will not call you back. They’re just going to call another office. That’s it. You have to get rid of your voicemail. So so that’s one part. The second the second part about the patient experience. If if the agent so so we we Annie has that practice management integration.

00:38:18:02 – 00:38:40:00
Adrian Lefler
And it reads the schedule exactly the way that the practice wants it. I mean it has the capability to like schedule exactly the way the practices decided it wants it to schedule. Okay. Yeah. So what we found we were trying to solve the problem of new thinking, you know, new patient phone calls coming in, and we didn’t want to miss those.

00:38:40:00 – 00:39:05:19
Adrian Lefler
But once we’ve turned this on, we’ve seen across hundreds of practices that like, like a 30, around 30% of all of their scheduled appointments go through the agent now. And a lot of them are just they’re their current patients. They’re not necessarily new patients. They’re just their current patients who don’t need to talk to anybody. Right. They don’t you talk to a human being.

00:39:05:20 – 00:39:25:05
Adrian Lefler
They already have trust. They just want to call and like schedule their hygiene appointment or reschedule or something like that. And so, I mean, think about it like I actually I have an example. This is this is sound ridiculous. But I remember talking to a doctor, there’s a couple of years ago, we actually put Annie in his office and he’s like, I don’t I don’t like it.

00:39:25:05 – 00:39:43:00
Adrian Lefler
He calls us back like a month later. She says, I don’t like it. I would rather my patients leave a message. I said, I says, I said, why would you want to leave a message on voicemail? He says, well, we’ll get to it eventually. Those are his words, right? And I said, well, yeah. He says, sometimes my my patients want to come see me so much.

00:39:43:02 – 00:40:06:15
Adrian Lefler
And these are exactly his words, but they’re pretty close that they’ll leave several voicemails in order to get to us. I’m like, I just got the phone, but I was I was gonna say like, why do you want to put your patient right? That gantlet like, it’s stupid. Like we have things like DoorDash now, you know, that’s.

00:40:06:16 – 00:40:07:02
Sara Hansen
Yes.

00:40:07:03 – 00:40:25:09
Adrian Lefler
Like, let’s talk about what people want. People want simplicity and speed. Yep. Do you not want to talk to you? So if you’ve got an AI agent that can pick up the phone or answer a chat, I can do the scheduling and get everything done. That’s what they want. They don’t. They don’t want to have to waste any time.

00:40:25:11 – 00:40:52:09
Sara Hansen
Yeah, you’re exactly right. I mean, even I love when I can make appointments for my kids online. Or I can, because we’re so busy in life right now that I don’t have a day where I can just sit and, like, do appointments and, you know, go pick up prescriptions. It’s like my whole life now is I pick up my groceries, I put an order in through my phone and go, I don’t have an hour to wander around the grocery store.

00:40:52:10 – 00:41:15:07
Sara Hansen
I’m a busy mom, you know, and I work. So you’re exactly right. When the patients are ready to take action, they want to take action because unfortunately, we have gotten accustomed to that. You know, I know I get annoyed when my next day, Amazon does not come next day because I am expecting that things don’t take a week to get to me anymore, right?

00:41:15:09 – 00:41:37:09
Sara Hansen
And so this is exactly what patients are looking for as well, is an easy way to make an appointment or to have questions answered. Or hey, something came up, can I reschedule? You know, and they’re not waiting weeks or days to get a call back. So I, I love everything you’re saying.

00:41:37:11 – 00:42:22:21
Adrian Lefler
There’s this idea. It’s like it’s like a weird kind of like thing that I think that’s like a. Subtext or like for a lot of dental practice that they that they feel like this personal one on one attention is, is, is really, really important. And I think that that is absolutely important in the office. But personal one one attention when the patient is not in the office is it’s like the vibe I get is that they want to always have a human being talking to that person and kind of building on the relationship and the amount of time that they spend on a call and, and kind of somehow supports the relationship.

00:42:22:21 – 00:42:51:02
Adrian Lefler
And, you know, that might be great. I mean, there might be some patients out there that really want to spend time and talk to their, their dental team, you know, and, and shoot the shit or whatever. But the reality is, like almost everybody out there is just like, I just don’t have the time to screw around. Okay, you make this easy for me, but when I walk in the door, you better know my name.

00:42:51:08 – 00:43:29:15
Adrian Lefler
Yeah, right. Know my name. When I walk in the door, say hi. Remember how many kids I’ve got? You know that like, that means something. But it doesn’t necessarily mean something on the phone, right? Like, let’s try and make that as simple as quick as possible. And then the experience in the office meaningful. It’s this goes back to this kind of like coined idea in AI that is let AI do all the dirty work, freeing up time for humans to do what humans do best, which is to build relationships.

00:43:29:15 – 00:43:55:22
Adrian Lefler
And that relationship building process begins in the office or is supported in the office. So what? I walked in to my last dental appointment, which was like a month ago. I walked in, there were two gals at the front. They were both on calls, they were both on their computer. And I walked in and I sat down and I waited for like 2 or 3 minutes, and then somebody said hello, right?

00:43:55:23 – 00:44:15:24
Adrian Lefler
And they asked me who I was. So it’s like, you know, what? If they weren’t on the phone and on the computer and then had me sitting down for 2 or 3 minutes and didn’t know my name. What if I walked in and they stood up and they said, oh, hey, Adrian is great to see you. How you been?

00:44:15:24 – 00:44:19:16
Adrian Lefler
How’s your wife? You know, we saw her three months ago.

00:44:19:18 – 00:44:20:09
Matt Hutchings
It’s that.

00:44:20:10 – 00:44:24:17
Adrian Lefler
That that’s where it’s valuable, right? So.

00:44:24:19 – 00:44:25:07
Sara Hansen
Yeah.

00:44:25:08 – 00:44:25:18
Adrian Lefler
Anyway.

00:44:25:19 – 00:44:50:07
Sara Hansen
Yeah, yeah. Adrian, I think the biggest takeaway for me from this conversation is the team is working hard. You know, they’re checking patients in. They’re talking about financial arrangements. They’re discussing treatment, answering questions and trying to keep up with everything around them. And while all that is going on. There’s a patient that’s calling. They’re ready to schedule, they’re ready to come in.

00:44:50:08 – 00:45:14:00
Sara Hansen
They’re ready to take action. And so, you know, really every missed call or every unanswered or every voicemail there is a patient behind that. And the technology isn’t replacing the human side of dentistry, but it’s more about protecting it. And so if you’re spending money to make your phone ring, you know, the question isn’t how do I get more leads?

00:45:14:00 – 00:45:41:04
Sara Hansen
But maybe it’s how do I protect what I already have? So I am so grateful that you were here today. Joining me, Matt, thank you for being my co-host today. I think this is a great conversation that every practice needs to hear. And if someone wants more information you know from you or even ask questions about Annie, how can they get Ahold of you?

00:45:41:06 – 00:45:42:13
Adrian Lefler
Paul, you guys.

00:45:42:15 – 00:45:58:10
Matt Hutchings
Call the eyes. Yeah. Let me ask. One last thing on this, too, is if a doctor gone through listen to this. And maybe they’re just in that initial dust discovery stage, right? Like everyone’s talking to AI. What are some what are some of the things that if you could just put a bow on this, like what should they investigate?

00:45:58:11 – 00:46:14:00
Matt Hutchings
What are the top things they should look at, you know, does it integrate in their practice software? You know, some of those initial steps to protect themselves? And then what would you recommend, you know, and what some of the things that they should do to to start this integration so they can.

00:46:14:04 – 00:46:36:14
Adrian Lefler
So yeah, that’s a good question. Matt okay. So first of all, for the for the audience, you know, we use Annie as our agent to solve these phone call problems and productive Dennis County Phoenix marketing Agency. There are also using Annie as well. So you don’t need to come to my social practice to learn about Annie or whatnot.

00:46:36:14 – 00:46:59:24
Adrian Lefler
You can call Sarah, Matt and the team over there and they can they can introduce you to it. So what the questions that I would ask is, number one, are there any can you show me any case studies? Okay. Can you show me any case studies. Can you show me that this is actually working in practices and what it’s actually done.

00:46:59:24 – 00:47:04:04
Adrian Lefler
And the numbers you want to look for in a case study are how many.

00:47:04:04 – 00:47:04:12
Matt Hutchings
Chats.

00:47:04:12 – 00:47:25:07
Adrian Lefler
Did it pick up? How many phone calls did it pick up of those chats and those phone calls that came in? What is the kind of the segmentation of the types of conversations that the agent was having with that patient? Were these new patients? Were they active patients? How many of those calls were about scheduling an appointment? How many were about rescheduling?

00:47:25:07 – 00:47:42:21
Adrian Lefler
How many were about billing? Okay, all of these things are tracked in a good AI system. Annie does all this tracking. Okay. So but I think the good ones out there track all of this. That’s important. Yes. Yeah. You can get a breakdown and go, oh, here are the calls that I’m missing. And these are what the conversations are about.

00:47:42:22 – 00:48:04:06
Adrian Lefler
Okay. Then what you want to do is you want to make sure that your AI agent has practice management integration so that you can see if these patients are actually scheduling and then showing up for the appointment and accepting treatment, which can be tracked all the way through so that you can get a true ROI number on what’s going on.

00:48:04:08 – 00:48:24:16
Adrian Lefler
So that’s one thing you’re reporting is going to be really, really, really helpful. And you have to have kind of what you want to know is you want to know how many calls and chats are coming in, what those conversations are about, how many of those are turning into scheduled appointments? Do the patients show up for the appointment and do the accept treatment?

00:48:24:17 – 00:49:01:04
Adrian Lefler
That’s a that’s a closed loop system there that will really go, okay. You know, I spent a few hundred dollars on this AI agent and I just generated $15,000 in revenue. Okay. We’re good. Right. So that’s one thing. I would also I would also be I would inquire about the capabilities of the configuration. So there are a lot of AI agents out there that are, that are the, the the product is sold as kind of an entry level agent and a customizable agent.

00:49:01:05 – 00:49:26:24
Adrian Lefler
Okay. And entry level agents have limited training, like they’ll only answer certain types of questions or they may not be dental specific. Right. So we although there are some companies that sell that and because it’s a cheaper, less expensive product, because there’s less training that goes on when you build the agent, a lot of people have jumped on it because it’s just cheap.

00:49:27:03 – 00:49:47:20
Adrian Lefler
We Annie’s not that. And he’s a and he’s like the premium product okay. So and I recommend that the cost between you know something that’s super cheap and something that’s fully customizable is probably 2 or $300 a month. And the, the, the benefits far outweigh the difference in cost. So I would definitely go with a fully custom agent.

00:49:47:20 – 00:50:05:13
Adrian Lefler
And what that means is that the training process for that agent might take a couple, 2 or 3 weeks to get it ready. So if you talk to an agent or if you talk to a company and they’ve got an agent, they’re like, hey, we can get this thing up and running by tomorrow. That is a red flag.

00:50:05:16 – 00:50:27:04
Adrian Lefler
And the reason why is because you want to build the agent you want to build in all of your data, your entire history of your practice, where the doctor with the school, how to find the practice of your lost, all of your insurances or non insurances, your sales flow, how to overcome this objection and this objection and this objection.

00:50:27:04 – 00:50:51:02
Adrian Lefler
And then you have to test it. You have to test it and you got to give it feedback. The longer you spend doing that in the beginning the agent when it launches is like spot on. It’s just like just like you’ve trained an employee. So if you’re looking for speed to market, what you’re giving up on is customization and it won’t have your voice.

00:50:51:02 – 00:51:13:08
Adrian Lefler
So I would just be really careful about going, oh, this is, this is this is less expensive and it’s quicker to market that you’re going to you’re going to run, you’re not going to be happy with it. So you want something that will take longer to develop and launch. Because this agent is like going to be a serious revenue generator for your product.

00:51:13:13 – 00:51:22:22
Adrian Lefler
You don’t want it screwing up. Yeah. So I would say that those are a couple of things reporting and customization.

00:51:22:24 – 00:51:24:09
Sara Hansen
And I love it.

00:51:24:10 – 00:51:28:02
Matt Hutchings
Once built, it doesn’t call in sick and it doesn’t miss calls.

00:51:28:04 – 00:51:40:06
Adrian Lefler
No. And it’s not asking for a raise. Although the dental marketing company, when you see you’ve made $50,000 in one month, might call it back and say, hey, I think we’re not charging you enough for this thing, whatever.

00:51:40:06 – 00:51:44:07
Sara Hansen
We’re going to be celebrating right with them. Like, look at this.

00:51:44:09 – 00:52:09:14
Adrian Lefler
Yeah. And by the way, just on that note, like I, I’ve watched, I’ve watched I mean, we have Annie in a couple hundred practices. Okay. And I’ve tracked this for a couple of years now. Smaller practices. And we’re not we’re not attaching this to marketing campaigns. This is not what you were describing, Sarah. Like, how do we get an AI agent to call on a leader like, this is just picking up missed calls.

00:52:09:15 – 00:52:41:09
Adrian Lefler
Okay. Yeah. On the low end, practice smaller practices. One practitioner maybe doing 600 to $800,000 a year. We’ll pick up an extra 3 to $5000 in new patient revenue just by not missing phone calls. Okay. Higher end where you might have three, 4 or 5 practitioners doing many and a half to 2.5 million, 30 to $60,000 in revenue coming in through the agent because they’re not missing calls.

00:52:41:09 – 00:52:46:03
Adrian Lefler
So great. It’s a big deal. It’s a really, really big deal.

00:52:46:07 – 00:53:04:10
Matt Hutchings
Not only big deal in the missing of the calls, but also we live in an environment now where people can leave reviews and they may not even have an experience with you in your practice, but they may leave a review that you simply don’t answer, or these things. So there’s a trail that can affect you later on by simply just not answering the call.

00:53:04:11 – 00:53:05:20
Matt Hutchings
You know, in the world today.

00:53:05:21 – 00:53:09:22
Adrian Lefler
Yeah, true. That’s true. It’s better customer service for sure. Yeah yeah.

00:53:09:24 – 00:53:36:09
Sara Hansen
Yeah yeah. And that’s really you know what, at the end of the day, are doctors and teams are looking for is how do we provide a better patient experience for every patient and bringing in new technology. It’s interesting. A lot of our doctors are big into dental technology. And they have the latest and the greatest in dental tools and technology, but they do get a little hesitant with AI.

00:53:36:10 – 00:54:01:09
Sara Hansen
So thank you for walking us through how this looks and feels, and the success of integrating really great technology into a different part of the patient experience that I think doctors forget about, which is those initial phone calls to the practice. And the gap really is that they’re missing them. And this is that solution. So I appreciate you being here, Adrian.

00:54:01:11 – 00:54:04:10
Adrian Lefler
Yeah, you’re very welcome. It was great to be here. Thanks for the invite.

00:54:04:15 – 00:54:05:22
Sara Hansen
Thanks, everyone.

00:54:05:23 – 00:54:23:05
Speaker 3
Hey, thanks for joining us on Everyday Practices Dental Podcast. It would mean the world to me if you could leave us a like or a review on iTunes, or go to Productive Dentist Academy through Google and leave us a review there. You know, we are here each week to talk about what’s possible when you leave your practice with clarity and courage.

00:54:23:06 – 00:54:40:13
Speaker 3
If you are ready to build a business that supports your life and not the other way around, investment grade practice coaching powered by productive, dense academy can help. Visit investment grade practice to schedule your free 60 minute coaching session so you can start designing the practice and lifestyle you’ve been dreaming about all along.