#272 15 New Patients per Month from AI Receptionist

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Dentists don’t realize their missed calls are quietly killing new‑patient growth. In this episode, Gary Bird breaks down how a Walnut Creek practice used an AI receptionist to book 12 of 13 missed new‑patient calls and add 10–15 new patients a month for just $299. You’ll learn the exact system they used to fix their 45% answer rate, stabilize their front desk, and unlock an 800% ROI using Trackable and AI‑driven phone conversion. These are real numbers from real practices inside SMC’s dataset of 1,195 offices, and the blueprint works anywhere.

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Website: https://wcdentists.com/
Website: http://juneportal.com

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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

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You guys actually built something called June Portal, and patient can actually go in and access all of their data.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

This was probably born from that time where we were only answering 45% of calls, and our front desk was just slammed. You know, we've added virtual assistants, we've added this AI assistant. One of the thoughts that we had was most of the phone calls that we're getting, you know, their new patient calls, where else are they coming from? They're billing questions, they're rescheduled or canceled. We decided why don't we just build something in the days of AI and being able to build kind of whatever you want that fits your practice that helps our friends us.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Welcome back to another episode of Dental Marketing Go. I'm your host, Gary Berg. Today I got a special guest, Dr. Ben and Dr. Jonathan out of Walnut Creek. They are absolutely crushing with marketing. Not only are they seeing an 800-plus ROI, they're also getting about 60 new patients a month. They're using AI to get them another 10 to 15 new patients, and they're just seeing amazing marketing results. They're going to break down how they've been able to do that. Stay tuned for this one. One of the things that I know that's driving that is you started using the AI receptionist that we have. And this last, I'm just going to give you last uh last uh this month, just this month, it takes all your miss calls and your after-hour calls. If you've had 13 miss calls this month that were new patients, 12 of them booked. So it's scheduling at 92%. Those patients you wouldn't never got them if it wasn't for the AI. They would have you went to voicemail, hung up, and went to another practice. So that is driving some ROI here. What has been your experience with the AI receptionists? Especially a lot of doctors hate AI, like right out of the box. They're like, AI is bad. It's gonna, it's gonna hurt the patient experience. What what are your guys' thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Well, uh, I think um we have so like we were really actually excited when we first started seeing this like particular type of product in the dental space. Um, and I think the again it goes back to like our whole experience with with SMC. Like we have we we've consistently had a pretty high ROI. And so like if you're getting you know our high ROI, the next question is why don't you just spend more and then give you more new patients and keep growing faster? And our our the reason why we haven't done that um to like or previously was always well, like you got to be able to answer those calls. Like, and um, and if we're getting more calls or we're spending more money, we don't want these to be going out. And I know like earlier last year, I was looking at the numbers before our call today, and like um last year, um towards the end of the year, we had some staffing issues and we were down um staff, and um our uh call answer rate dropped, and like to the point where it was at the low point, it was like 45% of calls coming in we were answering. And like, I don't want to spend more money on marketing if we're gonna be getting a bunch of voicemails, right? Um, and so when we started seeing stuff about the trackable AI receptionists, it's like, well, this is like exactly the solution to the problem, is that someone's always answering this call, even if they don't like nail it, knock it out of the park, best call ever, at least somebody's answering it. And then if they need to like get more information, we can get it on, you know, to to the front desk. And so I can tell you just looking at the last couple of months, now we're up answering calls near like 70 plus percent. Um, and so like obviously work to do, but like that's a huge increase. And I think that's a big part of why like it, like that's a for us, that's like you know, like it's a no-brainer. This is working really well. Um, there's definitely issues to troubleshoot, you know, like some people I think some people don't like talking to the AI. Um, some people don't mind it. Um, but like I I've done a I've been pretty on top of trying to go back and listen to a bunch of the calls and this is as many of the calls as I can through the trackable platform. Um and it does like a I mean it captures the data that you need. It doesn't capture like stuff that you don't need. You don't, you know, like I don't have a front receptionist spending 20 minutes getting to know, you know, like all the details of this new patient's life, and then they know they know show the appointment. Um, you know, it's uh it's all um like it it the the AI receptionist um just gets the info that you need. It sounds like a real person. Some people know that it's not, some people don't, and then you move on and it all happens in the background, and you know, nobody has to um to actually talk to them.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

The biggest thing that I've noticed too is like I I I argue with people on Facebook about this all the time. They're like, well, it ruins the patient experience. And I'm like, you want to know what else ruins the patient experience? Going to the voicemail. You know what I mean? Like, that's a horror. So it's like it's better than that. Like that, that's for sure, right? And it's it's it's actually I've I've kind of looked at since you've started using it. It looks like you've jumped about 10 to 12 new patients, and it's 290. So you you basically without spending you spent $299 more for an AI receptionist and got 10 to 15 more new patients. It's kind of a no-brainer, and I think most dentists are in that in that range. Like that's what I've seen is like you're gonna get five to ten more new patients for $299 a month.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, totally. And a big part of it too that I loved is uh our staff is is a big reason for that ROI. Uh we're one of the best staffs in the country, for sure. Um, and we're proud of that. And John and I, we don't answer phones all day, every day. But a year ago, a year and a half ago, we decided we wanted to start training our front desk on how to answer phones. And coming from dentists, it doesn't meld the way you want it to, you know. They're kind of like we do this all day, every day, we kind of know what works, and so you know, we got a little pushback and implementation for you know uh the order, you know, I hesitate to say script, but it it wasn't going as well as we wanted it to. And so this was a solution to that, and I think it's been really beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

That's awesome. So you guys are um seeing uh about right now your floating like 60 new patients um a month, your high is like 80. What's the what's the future look like for you guys? Like what's your do you have a do you have a future goal or where where are you guys at overall as an office?

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Yeah, I mean I I think our goal initially and was to consistently get to the point where we're seeing 75 new patients a month, and I think we're creeping up towards that. I don't know if we're averaging that quite yet. Um, but I've noticed that when we're there, our schedule is packed and we're we're just busy. Like everyone, you know, like like I think that would be capacity for us. And then we don't have a um like a pathway, like, oh, we're gonna add an associate or do you know expand or anything like that. But I think once we get there, then it's like, well, now we can have that conversation. Now we can can start you know thinking about it. We we've talked generally, we've got big picture you know thoughts about it, but we haven't like um, but I think, yeah, I think that's the pathway to get there is to consistently be um seeing you know this these new patients, and and now that we've got the AI receptionist answering calls at the rate that we need, now it makes sense to maybe spend a little bit more on marketing if we're still getting that 800% at ROI, you know, like that would be um now now it's money well spent.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

That's huge, yeah. It's a kind of a no-brainer. Put a dollar in, get get eight back. You you do that all day. That's that's awesome. Or you can get a couple AI, a couple AI agents to answer and you and uh your guys' uh June to manage uh a lot of those quite like you can there's ways that you can spend a couple hundred dollars rather than spending in California, it's you're probably spending five, five, six grand uh right out the door, right? So it's like you can it reduces a lot of workflow. So this is something I'm actually now I'm just processing as we're talking about it. Like, there's so many ways that this could save a dental office a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

A big part of what we wanted to build is all these things that review management system, membership plan management system, if you have enough patience in your practice on this app, the app can do it. You know, that it's it's simple to build a push notification review request that takes somebody to a Google page. And so for our office, and I think this is what we plan on continuing to build for the app, is building a place where all these third-party dashboards that your front desk has to sign into just to keep track of can all just live in one home. Because that's what our front desk complains about, right? Is uh our front desk complains every time we add a new thing, there's a new dashboard they have to learn, there's a new password, there's you know, and so things kind of fall off the wagon. But uh, what we wanted to do is build something that they can just go to one spot and and hopefully we can build out for other practices too. I think we can.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

That's awesome. Man, thanks for sharing that, and uh we'll get that out there. And then if there uh if there's anything else, do you guys think there's anything else we should cover? Or I think we got I got everything on my side.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

I got one uh this is uh I might nerd out a little bit here, but I got one little uh nugget that I got from listening to trackable calls. Um so it's really I think it's really fascinating when you're listening to the calls. Um, you can almost hear the moment when people realize they're talking to a computer. And I heard it over and over and over and over and over again. And I like when you when you mentioned earlier, like dentists worry about like their the patient interaction or how it's perceived. Um there's actually, I I Googled it, there's a term for when somebody starts like realizes they start talking to a computer, it's called social uh presence collapse. So basically, like when you're having a conversation like this, there are certain like social expectations, like you know, like that we just read each other kindly.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, I'm not gonna burp, I'm not gonna like yeah, pick up a phone and talk it to somebody else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

And so when you realize that you're talking to a computer, that all goes away. And so it's it's it's defined. What is the phrase called?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

I've never heard I know exactly what you're talking about, but I've never heard a coin before.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

What is the what is social presence collapse? So it's when perceived human presence suddenly drops after AI detection. And the four things that it mentioned that tend to happen is one, uh conversational warmth drops. Um, two, speech becomes transactional. So it's less like having a conversation and more like, okay, what's the next command I need to give you to get you to do what I want? Um and then three is either depending on the person, either patience will increase or patience will decrease. So for some people, they're like, oh, I'm talking to a computer, like I get frustrated. And some people are like, oh, I'm talking to a computer, I have to be patient to let it do its thing, it can only do so much. Um, and then the last one is some callers will either like start simplifying their language or either or it's like they'll start testing the system to see what it can do. And I've seen all of these things on it. It's really I think it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

So that is cool. So what's the take what's uh what's the takeaway from that?

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Uh I just think that like these days people are actually used to this kind of stuff. Anytime you call any big organization or company or anything like that, like AI is not like talking to an AI is not that scary. People have been talking to like unintelligent phone systems, press one for this, press two for that, you know, for I mean, decades now. And so um this is just like actually like a next step. This is, I think, even more helpful um in that evolution. And so, like, you know, from us, from my perspective, I have a lot of the same reservations as I think a lot of the dentists you talk to probably do, but like that hasn't been our experience that like people are so off put by this. Um, I think people are like, okay, fine, they realize they're talking to an AI, they're just like used to that, and then they keep talking to it like that, and they get through the conversation, and now we have a new patient in our schedule, and it didn't take up any of our front desk time.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

That's so awesome. Yeah, the I love that phrase. I'm gonna be using that. I actually already posted about it in our Facebook group, but one one last one one last thought is um the I I hear this a lot where people say, I hate AI. Every time I call the airport or the airlines or the IRS, their AI sucks. And I'm like, that's not AI. That's those are prompts that they've built with automations, and they're literally made to be really painful. So you never call them again. You always go back to the website. Like AI, when you actually get on an AI agent that's good, they're really good. Like they're they're really good and they'll help you get exactly what you need, and they're trained on that, and they'll always be say the right thing, they'll always give the right answer, they'll always be available. And it's only going to get more. I have a doctor right now that lets AI answer all of their calls. Uh, he saw almost 200 patients last month, and it's scheduling at like 81%. And he just, yeah, he just lets lets AI do it. You know what I mean? And it's one less thing for the front desk to do. And it's not like, it's not like our front desk are just sitting around, you know what I mean? Like they're spread really thin. So it 10 more patient calls that are five minutes each, that's a lot of time off the off the front desk schedule. So that's awesome. Absolutely love it.