Call this number: +1 (803) 752-5363
I’m serious. Call it right now. An AI named Sarah will pick up, ask about your dental needs, and book you a cleaning appointment — date, time, confirmation, the whole thing.
When you hang up, a Slack message fires to the practice’s team channel with your name, the appointment details, and a summary of the call. No human touched it.
I built this in a weekend.
Why this matters
The average small practice or service business misses 30% of incoming calls during peak hours. Morning rush, lunch break, end of day — your busiest times are exactly when phones go to voicemail.
Every missed call is a patient, client, or customer who books somewhere else.
Hiring another receptionist costs $35-45K/year. An AI receptionist like this runs 24/7 for a fraction of that — and never puts anyone on hold.
How it works
The system uses Retell AI for the voice layer. When someone calls, the AI:
Greets them naturally (not robotic — try it yourself and see)
Asks what they need — new patient visit, cleaning, specific concern
Offers available time slots
Confirms the booking
Sends the details to the team via Slack (or email, or CRM — whatever they use)
The whole conversation takes about 90 seconds. The caller doesn’t navigate a phone tree. They don’t leave a voicemail that nobody checks until tomorrow. They get an answer and a booked appointment, immediately.
What I learned building it
Three things surprised me:
First, the voice quality is much better than you’d expect. Most people won’t realize it’s AI for the first 10-15 seconds. The latency is low enough that it feels like a real conversation.
Second, the hard part isn’t the AI — it’s the workflow behind it. Getting the booking confirmation to land in the right Slack channel, with the right details, formatted so the team can act on it without hunting for information. That’s where the real work lives.
Third, this isn’t limited to dental. The same architecture works for any business that books appointments or takes inbound calls: real estate teams, law firms, insurance agencies, home services, auto repair, veterinary clinics. Change the greeting, change the booking logic, and you have a new vertical in an afternoon.
Try it yourself
Seriously — call +1 (803) 752-5363. Book a demo cleaning. See what the experience feels like from the customer’s side. Then imagine that running for your business at 11pm on a Saturday when your front desk went home hours ago.
If you want something like this for your business, I build these. Starting at $1,500 for a fully configured AI receptionist that answers calls, books appointments, and routes everything to your team.
Book a free 15-minute audit and I’ll tell you exactly what it would look like for your setup: https://cal.com/scott-coffey-lsiim5/free-ai-audit-find-your-top-3-time-wasters
Quick Hits
Anthropic shipped Claude’s “computer use” to desktop — Claude can now click, type, and navigate applications on your actual computer. It’s still early, but the implications for workflow automation are massive. If you’re using Claude for work, this is worth experimenting with.
Google launched Gemini 2.5 Pro — their most capable model yet, with a 1M token context window that actually works. Good for processing large documents, codebases, or datasets in a single pass.
n8n hit 100K+ self-hosted instances — the open-source workflow automation platform keeps growing. If you’re paying for Zapier and doing more than a few automations, n8n on Railway ($5/month) is worth a look. It’s what I use to wire everything together.
Prompt of the Week
Use this to figure out if an AI receptionist would actually help your business:
I run a [type of business] with [X employees]. We receive approximately [Y] incoming calls per day. Our front desk staff currently handles: [list what they do — scheduling, answering questions, routing calls, etc.].
Analyze my call volume and tell me:
How many of these calls are likely “routine” (scheduling, hours, directions, basic questions) vs “complex” (complaints, consultations, emergencies)?
Based on industry data, what percentage of calls am I probably missing during peak hours?
What would an AI receptionist handle vs what still needs a human?
Rough estimate: how much am I losing annually from missed calls?
Be specific with numbers. Don’t sugarcoat it.
Until next week,
Scott
P.S. — If you called the number, reply and tell me what you thought. I want to know if Sarah convinced you she was human.