#270 I Built an AI that Books Patients While I Sleep

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Most dental offices are losing new patients before they ever book an appointment. Gary Bird breaks down how AI receptionists are converting 70–80% of new patient calls while the average dental office misses 35% of calls and converts only about 50% of the ones they answer.

In this episode, you’ll learn how AI can improve phone conversion, reduce wasted dental marketing spend, fill schedules 48–72 hours in advance, and create more predictable new patient growth. Gary also explains how SMC is using AI-driven tracking, outbound texting, and patient communication systems to help practices identify operational bottlenecks and grow faster.

If you want better practice management, more efficient patient acquisition, and stronger fee-for-service growth, this episode breaks down the exact systems driving results right now.

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Dental Marketing Goat is the go-to podcast for dentists who want to grow faster, market smarter, and build practices that thrive in today’s competitive landscape. 
Hosted by Gary Bird, the Dental Marketing Goat himself and founder of SMC National, recently named Best Dental Marketing Agency by over 60,000 dental professionals. Each episode unpacks the real strategies, marketing frameworks, and operational shifts that high-performing practices use to attract more patients and increase production. Whether you're a solo practitioner or scaling a DSO, you’ll learn how to align your marketing, team, and systems to drive predictable growth.

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Transcript

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Today I'm gonna talk about how we created an AI agent that it can actually book patients as you sleep. Now, before I get into that, it's very important that you understand where we're at in the AI journey, especially when it comes to dental marketing. There's a very specific stage that we're at that's gonna impact your business for generations to come. And so where a lot of people are focused on right now, and this is the wrong area to be focused on, but this is where everybody's putting their attention, is they're putting their attention on do I pop up in ranking on ChatGBT? The problem with this right now is that ChatGBT and all the other models except for maybe Gemini or don't know what they want to be when they grow up. They don't know. And so when you go into Chat GBT, depending on if you have a paid version, an unpaid version, the exact phrasing that you use and the time of day and how many other people are using that model, you're gonna get different results for your practice. And it just changes. And then all of a sudden, one day you wake up and ChatGPT decides to change everything about the ranking. Just recently, I looked at a dentist that uh ChatGPT decided to start using Yelp to put the rankings on the dentist, but only when you search really specific keywords. And this is true for every other model as well, with the exception of Gemini. And so you're going in and you're checking, you're like, oh, I don't rank. Oh, I do rank. And it's like, what exactly did you search? When did you search? Do you have a paid model? Was there a lot of other people using that model at the time that you were using it, or was it at a low peak? That changes because ChatGPT and the other models, they'll revert back to some of their older uh algorithms or their older rankings because it's cheaper for them to run from a power standpoint and a GPU standpoint. So there's all these changes that are going on there. And on top of that, Google is seeing more traffic for keywords around dentistry than it ever has before for all services. So why is that? Well, what's happening is people are researching and using ChatGPT very specifically, and it's not to find the next dentist. It's actually to go in and do research on dentistry, and then they go back out to Google to pick the dentist that they want to work with because they trust the algorithm with Google way more than they trust with ChatGPT when it comes to spit picking a specific business, but not when it comes to doing specific research around ailments and like what do I need to replace this tooth and those kind of things. Okay, does that make sense so far? Now, the only exception to this is Gemini. Gemini has been really consistent and hasn't seen these fluctuations. And the reason why is very clear. They're pulling directly from Google and how how SEO already works while everybody else is trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. So we track this meticulously. Less than 1% of all the thousands and thousands and thousands of new patients that we drive every single day, every single week, every single month for all of our clients, less than 1% of them are coming from AI agents. And that that means that most people are going back out to Google to still find their dentists. So that is not the place that we should be focusing on right now because even if you rank today, you might not rank tomorrow on all these agents. And they're gonna add in ads and all those things. And we're not at that monetary, they're not gonna monetize those platforms yet. They're getting closer, but they're not there yet. So what should we be focusing on when it comes to AI? Well, it's very, very clear, okay. Number one, AI is already implemented in all of your marketing if you're doing anything digitally. Meaning Google's already using AI and all their ad platforms. Facebook, Meta, they're already using AI in all their platforms. The problem is, is they're using AI, and then the tracking is just randomly going to a spreadsheet or somewhere like that, and then it gets into your PMS, and you have no AI throughout the whole patient journey. This is key. Okay. So what we built is we built the top of the funnel of AI being able to handle that first initial lead, that patient calling you. And right now, it is able to book better than a human. If you take the average human in a dental office that's scheduling new patients, not only do they miss 35% of the calls, but they only convert about 50% of the calls that they do answer when it's a marketing new patient. Our chatbot, it's an AI receptionist, can take all calls. It doesn't miss any calls. So it takes, it can take 100% of your new patient calls, or it can take some of your new patient calls, the ones that you miss, and it's going to schedule 70 to 80% of those versus your office. Okay, so it's gonna, it's gonna not miss calls, plus it's going to also schedule at a higher rate than your scheduling, which means you're gonna see more new patients. So when people implement this, what we're seeing is anywhere from five to 12 new patients a month, in addition, just by taking the missed calls and the after-hour calls. What that opens you up to now is you can now market at different times when maybe you're not available by the phones. If you're closed on Friday and you have nobody in the office, you can still run ads on Friday. And the reason this is so powerful is because you now can get clicks on Friday when it's cheaper to buy clicks on Friday because you have an AI receptionist that's taking calls on that day. Okay, same thing with after hours emergencies, same things with early hour ads, same things with after hour ads. It's actually cheaper to run marketing during those times because no one else is running it. So we have a window right here where you can get cheaper traffic, cheaper leads, and execute those patients at a higher rate than if your team was to handle them. And then they're going to schedule at your office. So that's the first step that AI has implemented. The second step that we've implemented is AI is then doing all the tracking either after the AI receptionist answers or all uh your team answers all the way through. AI is tracking this and then segregating it and putting it into different buckets. So, what do I mean by that? Number one, AI knows where everything's coming from. It knows if it's an internet lead or a patient lead. And then it can segment that properly. Why is that so important? Well, this can tell you how your results are actually doing. So we can actually see on the back end, oh, this is how all these patients are doing, and this is how they're performing, this is how the marketing's performing versus the patient referrals. And this tells us if we have a marketing problem or an operational problem. We can see it very clearly in the data. So that's the second leg that you're implementing AI into your whole marketing journey. Now there's a third leg that's going to be coming out this year. We're launching it this year, 2026, and it's going to be huge. It's going to be bigger than all the other stuff I just talked to combined. And it's going to be outbound text messaging. And you say, well, why is that such a big deal for AI? Well, right now, AI is implemented on the front end and it takes a little bit of work off your team's plate. But where the real meat or the real burden of work, of labor, is really after the patient becomes a patient. So when that patient walks through the door, we have a lot of different things that happen. So what we're going to be able to do is we're going to do outbound text. So that means any new patient that schedules is then going to get a confirmation text from AI, not from your office, directly from you know whatever system you use or your PMS, not from a human, from AI. But the patient's going to think that it's your office, that it's a human. And your office isn't going to see what's going on either. And this is really important. The reason this is so important is it's going to say, Mr. Jones, you have a dental appointment in three days. Please say yes here that you're going to be there. Otherwise, you're not we're not going to save your spot. And at that point, if that patient doesn't reply, then what AI is going to do is it's going to start finding other patients, whether it's a new patient to fill that spot, or an existing recare patient to come fill that spot, or unscheduled treatment that needs hygiene to fill that spot. And it's going to start texting in groups saying, hey, we have this availability at this time, wanted to check in. We noticed that you still needed your cleaning. And it's going to start filling your calendar proactively without you ever knowing it. And that's all coming this year. Like it's already parts of this are already built out, it's already being tested, and it and it's really, really exciting. What this means is that your team isn't going to have to be the one calling the patients for unscheduled treatment, recare, et cetera, et cetera, confirmation, none of that. The AI is going to handle all of that. And what the outcome is, is that your schedule, 72 hours, 48 hours in advance, stays full no matter what. Because every person has been confirmed. Anybody who didn't confirm, we got another patient to fill that spot. And your hygiene and treatment schedule stays filled for pennies. Like we're talking hundreds of dollars for these different services. Now, how can you get ahead on this? Well, the way you get ahead on this is you start using the AI receptionist now because that's going to lay the groundwork for how it's going to respond to all of your future patients. And then that marketing AI will then be integrated all the way through the whole patient journey. It's not just about, oh, do I rank in ChatGPT when I search this very specific keyword? You can literally rank for those keywords and it's not going to move the needle. You don't meet, you don't meet a lot of dentists that are like, oh, I get hundreds of new patients because I ranked in ChatGPT. Doesn't work that way. What's going to happen is it's going to be AI that's helping you proactively fill your schedule, which then helps you reduce your marketing cost and your marketing waste. That is where AI is at right now. That is the beginning. If you want to check out the AI receptionists, it's right down below. It's $299 a month, no contract. It's kind of crazy if you don't have this right now. And I'll say this word of warning not all AI receptionists are built the same. Most of the AI receptionists out there right now are scheduling at 0%, meaning they don't even have the capability to schedule new patients. And the ones that are converting, they're scheduling at 30 to 40%, which means you're losing the majority of your new patients. Okay, so you gotta be aware of that. All right, thanks so much for tuning in.