We know that not everyone’s first reaction to an AI dental receptionist is enthusiasm. Change can feel unsettling, particularly when it involves something as personal as your dental care – and if you’ve called The Briars recently and been greeted by Clara rather than one of our team, you might have wondered why.
This article is our honest explanation. We want to tell you who Clara is, what she can do, why we introduced her, and – just as importantly – what she can’t do and when you’ll always speak to a real person.
Clara is The Briars’ AI dental receptionist, powered by a platform called Zeno. She handles incoming calls to the practice – booking, cancelling, and amending appointments, answering common questions about the practice, and managing enquiries that come in outside our opening hours.
She isn’t a recorded message or a basic phone menu. Clara is a conversational AI – she listens, responds, and handles requests in a way that’s designed to feel as natural and efficient as possible. She’s available around the clock, every day of the year, and she answers every call without delay.
The honest answer is that we were facing a challenge that will feel familiar to anyone who has ever waited on hold: our phones were busier than our team could always manage in real time. During peak hours particularly, calls were sometimes going unanswered or patients were waiting longer than we’d like. For a practice that prides itself on patient experience, that wasn’t good enough.
We looked at the options available to us and concluded that an AI dental receptionist was the most effective solution – not as a replacement for our reception team, but as a way of ensuring that every call gets answered, every time, without anyone being left waiting.
Our front of house team and the wider admin team – are still very much here. What Clara has done is free them up to focus on the patients in front of them, the more complex enquiries that genuinely benefit from a human conversation, and the administrative work that keeps the practice running smoothly behind the scenes. Everyone’s time is better spent as a result.
Clara handles the most common reasons patients call a dental practice:
She can book new appointments, check availability, and confirm your booking. She can cancel or amend existing appointments at any time of day or night – including outside our normal opening hours, when our team isn’t available to take calls. She can answer frequently asked questions about the practice – our location, opening hours, the treatments we offer, how to register as a new patient, and more. And she handles out-of-hours calls so that patients who need to cancel a late-evening or weekend appointment, or who have a question outside office hours, aren’t left without a response until the next working day.
For many patients – particularly those who find it difficult to call during the working day – having an AI dental receptionist available at 10pm on a Sunday is genuinely useful. No more trying to remember to call during your lunch break, only to find the line is busy.
We want to be clear about this, because it matters. Clara is not a clinician. She cannot give clinical advice, assess dental symptoms, manage a complaint, or handle anything that requires a human judgment call. If you call with a dental emergency, a clinical question, a concern about your care, or anything sensitive, Clara will recognise that the conversation needs to go to a member of our team.
You can also ask to speak to a person at any point. If you’d prefer not to deal with an AI dental receptionist – for any reason, no explanation needed – simply say so and Clara will connect you with the team or arrange for us to call you back. There is always a human available when you need one.
We also want to be honest that Clara isn’t perfect. AI technology is improving rapidly, but there will be moments when she doesn’t quite understand what you’re asking, or when the conversation would simply flow better with a person. We’re aware of this, we’re monitoring it, and we’re committed to improving the experience over time. Your feedback – positive or otherwise – genuinely helps us do that.
Clara is, as we’ve come to say internally, a little bit marmite. Some patients have been delighted – particularly those who’ve appreciated being able to manage their appointments at a time that suits them, without waiting on hold. Others have found the experience jarring, or have simply preferred speaking to a familiar voice.
Both reactions are entirely valid, and we respect them. Introducing an AI dental receptionist wasn’t a decision we took lightly, and we didn’t do it to cut costs or reduce the human element of our practice. We did it because answering every call, without delay, is something we genuinely believe is better for our patients – and Clara makes that possible in a way that our team alone couldn’t always guarantee.
If you’ve had an experience with Clara that you’d like to share – good or otherwise – we’d love to hear from you. You can contact the team directly at enquiries@briarsdentalcentre.com or call us during opening hours to speak to a member of the team. We’re always listening.
At The Briars, we’ve always believed in investing in technology that improves patient care – from CBCT imaging and iTero scanning to Virtual Monitoring and Digital Smile Design. Clara is the latest expression of that commitment. She isn’t the future replacing the present; she’s a tool that makes the present work better for more of our patients, more of the time.
We hope that, even if you weren’t immediately sure about her, this explanation helps. And if you ever want to talk to a human – about Clara, about your care, or about anything else – we’re always here.
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