Before you listen to a demo, spend a little time at your own front desk.
Watch what happens when the phone rings while someone is paying. Ask who checks the voicemail on Monday morning. Find out whether your receptionist gets a proper lunch break, and which jobs they keep moving to tomorrow.
That will tell you far more about whether you need an AI receptionist than a list of features.
We build Lyngo, so we have an interest in clinics using AI phone answering. We also think you should have a clear reason for bringing it into yours. Start with the part of the day that needs help.
Look at what happens after you close
After-hours calls are a useful place to start because you can assess them separately from your daytime reception.
Check your phone records for a normal week. How many calls arrive after closing, before opening or over the weekend? What happens to those callers now?
They might leave a message, book online or call again the next day. Some calls will need your team’s attention regardless of who answers. Avoid treating every missed call as a lost patient. You need to understand what people wanted and whether they eventually got it sorted.
Then look at the following morning. If reception starts the day returning calls about bookings and appointment changes, some of that work began while the clinic was closed.
An AI receptionist is worth considering here if it can complete those routine requests. Ask a provider to demonstrate an actual booking and a reschedule using your clinic’s appointment rules. Also ask what happens when a caller needs someone who has gone home.
With Lyngo, clinics can choose after-hours cover while keeping their existing phone number. That gives you a specific place to begin and a manageable change to assess.
Work out where reception’s time is going
“Reception is busy” needs a bit more detail before you can make a useful decision.
For a week, ask your team to keep a rough note of what takes their time. Keep it light. Nobody needs a stopwatch beside the card terminal.
Look at phone bookings, patients at the desk, payments, paperwork and follow-up. Pay particular attention to interruptions. A two-minute call can land halfway through a task that needs concentration.
Ask which jobs remain unfinished at the end of the day. If reception spends the afternoon moving appointments over the phone while other work piles up, you have a specific workload to address.
It is equally reasonable to discover that your team has enough time. If calls are answered, follow-up is current and staff have room to help patients properly, the case for daytime AI cover is weaker. After-hours cover might still make sense on its own.
A quiet patch does not automatically mean someone is underworked, either. Look across the week. A receptionist can have spare time at 11 am and be overwhelmed when several patients finish at once.
The aim is to understand when the workload exceeds the time available.
Talk to your team before choosing a system
Your reception team should be part of deciding where help would be useful. They know the booking exceptions, the questions patients ask repeatedly and the calls that take longer than anyone expects.
Have the conversation before you settle on a provider. A few useful questions are:
Which calls would you be happy to have help with?
What do you struggle to finish because the phone keeps ringing?
Which conversations need to stay with you?
What would you want to check before trusting it with patients?
Give people room to be sceptical. A concern about appointment types or an awkward handoff is something to test.
Be clear about what you want to achieve, too. If you want reception to have more time with patients at the desk, explain that. If you want to stop spending your evenings checking voicemail, say so.
Your team deserves to understand what will change in their working day. They should also help decide how any time saved will be used.
Decide what you want it to handle
You do not need to hand over every call.
You could start after hours, during the lunch break or when reception cannot get to the phone. Choose the period where you have found a clear gap.
Then agree on the work the assistant should do. Routine bookings and appointment changes are sensible tasks to test. More involved conversations need a clear route back to your team.
Work through the awkward cases before going live. A patient asks for an appointment type that is not available. Someone wants to speak to their practitioner. A caller is unhappy and asks for a person.
For after-hours use, be precise about what happens when nobody is available to take a transfer. Decide who receives the message and when they will follow up.
Ask to see these situations demonstrated with your clinic’s rules. Include your receptionist in the test. They will know which details to check.
Write a small plan and review it together
A first trial should be easy to explain. For example:
An example plan
We’ll use the assistant after closing for two weeks. It will handle routine bookings and appointment changes. Reception will review anything needing follow-up each morning. At the end of the trial, we’ll look at how the calls went and whether the morning workload has improved.
Before starting, record what happens today so you have something to compare it with.
During the trial, review completed bookings, calls needing follow-up and any mistakes your team had to correct. Ask whether patients could reach a person when they needed one. Include the time spent checking the system when you assess the workload.
A high number of answered calls tells you only part of the story. You also need to know whether callers got useful help and whether reception had less work as a result.
Agree on a review date and make a decision together. You might extend the cover, adjust the booking rules or decide the current arrangement works better.
There is no need to introduce AI reception everywhere at once. Start with a problem your team recognises, give it a clear job, and see whether the working day improves.
Tanmay Patel, CEO
