#282 One AI-Scheduled Patient Paid for the Entire Year

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What happens when your practice stops sending missed calls to voicemail?

In this episode, Dr. Shane Wingler shares how his practice implemented an AI Receptionist and what happened next.

Over a five-month period, the AI answered missed new-patient calls, scheduled after-hours appointments, and helped recover opportunities that would otherwise have gone to competing practices.

One patient scheduled through the AI Receptionist paid for the platform for the entire year. Then that patient scheduled their entire family.

In this conversation, Gary Bird and Dr. Shane discuss:
📌How the AI Receptionist handles missed calls automatically
📌Why 19 out of 28 missed new patient calls still got scheduled
📌 The real ROI behind AI phone answering for dental practices
📌 How the AI supports front office team members during busy times
📌 What patients experience when calling after hours
📌 Why are practices using AI to eliminate lost opportunities

If your practice struggles with missed calls, limited front-desk capacity, or after-hours patient inquiries, this episode shows what is possible when every call is answered.

Connect with our Guest Here ⤵️
Website: https://carolinapinesdentistry.com/

Connect with our Host, Gary Bird, Here ⤵️
SMC: https://bit.ly/4jFhb5T
Personal: https://bit.ly/3SCEQZy

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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.

🚀 Want to see how SMC can help you grow?

📱 Book a call here:➡️ https://bit.ly/4jFhb5T

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I mean, I know when we finally launched it, I can remember a patient that scheduled himself over the weekend, I think, or a Friday or something. The AI agent scheduled him. He came in, treatment he needed was nothing fancy, but you know some tune-up type things, and it pretty much paid for itself for the rest of the year off of that one. I remember that specifically because I was like, well, that's solid. Everything else is gravy. And then he ended up scheduling his entire family after the end of that appointment. You're in the black for forever on the product. Right. So it's just like, yeah, why would you not? Why would you not do that?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Welcome back to another episode of Dental Marketing Go. I'm your host, Gary Bird. I'm the owner of SMC National, where we help officers just like yours level the playing field against the big guys out there so you can grow the way that you want. And in today's episode, Dr. Shane is going to share exactly how he's using an AI receptionist to help his team with missed calls. The dental industry misses 35% of their calls. And a lot of those are new patients. So if you're spending money on marketing, this is a must-watch because you're going to be able to now use AI to get those patients to not only schedule, but to come in and buy treatment. And all it took for Dr. Shane was one patient to justify having this AI receptionist for a whole year. This is an amazing episode. Stay tuned. You guys are using our AI agent, and I just pulled up the stats on it. So since January, January, February, March, April, May, so five months, you guys actually do a really good job. So this isn't as heavy as a lift as most practices, but during those uh five months, you've missed 28 new patient calls, meaning your team was just busy. They were doing other stuff, taking care of patients, and they missed a new patient call. Before last year, 2025, those would have just gone to voicemail, and more than likely the new patient would have went on to the next practice. But your but you guys added the AI agents $299 a month. It takes the call as the AI agent, and of those 28, 19 scheduled. So it's 68% of them scheduled, which is awesome because you would have had zero. You know what I mean? So it's like a lot better than than than zero. Um, that's been pretty cool to watch because that's new. This is newer technology. Um, any thoughts on that or anything that you've seen around that?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

I mean, I know when we finally launched it, I can remember a patient that scheduled um himself he scheduled himself over the weekend, I think, or a Friday or something. The AI agent scheduled scheduled him. He came in and the treatment he needed was nothing fancy, but you know, just some some tune-up type things, and it pretty much paid for itself for the rest of the year off of that one one patient. I remember that specifically because I was like, Well, that's solid. So every everything else is gravy. Um, and then he ended up scheduling his entire family after the at the end of that appointment. So it was like You're in the black for forever on the product. Right. So it's just like, yeah, why would you not? Why would you not do that? Um, so yeah, it's been the girls have loved it too, just from a steam uh team standpoint, because they know they have that support as well, too. Like if they can't get to someone, um, they know we we have her name as Allie. So Allie will pick up the phone and um handle it from there. That's awesome.