24/7 VIRTUAL RECEPTIONISTS

Answering service for dentists and orthodontists

Something to smile about. Smith.ai's dental answering service handles calls, books appointments & sends reminders — so you can focus on patient care.

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A dental assistant prepares their tools for a teeth cleaning.

Incoming calls are unpredictable.

Calls come in, but you're not always available to answer them. We capture leads, book appointments, collect payment, and log details instantly in your systems.

Take care of teeth cleanings while we handle the calls.

There’s too much to do, and you can't delegate a dentist's work. Hand off "the rest" to our receptionists. We capture leads, set appointments, and follow-up to win business.

We provide 360-degree coverage to manage both your inbound and outbound customer engagement.

Powerful call intelligence gives your business the lead

Make better business decisions with real-time call data, visualized in every Smith.ai client dashboard. Every call summary is enriched with metadata including actions completed, caller disposition, priority, relevance, call recording and transcription, and more. See the big picture with historical tables and charts to predict business growth, costs, and ROI with superior accuracy.

Outreach calls and campaigns speed-up sales and support

Smith.ai receptionists make calls on your behalf, improving your speed-to-lead and unburdening staff who need to reach out to clients. We'll call-back online leads who complete web forms, contact donors for donation renewals, chase down payments on unpaid invoices, and more. We'll even send follow-up emails and texts after every call to ensure a connection is made. Learn more.

82%

of consumers expect an immediate response to a sales inquiry

50%

of lead generation budgets are wasted on leads who are never contacted

79%

of marketing leads never convert into sales

67%

of customers who receive excellent service spend up to 14% more

Capture and book appointments with 24/7 Live Chat.

Keeping a dental office running efficiently can be time-consuming. Our 24/7 live agents respond instantly to chats and texts, so new online leads are converted while you stay focused on important work.

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Outreach Campaigns

Where we reach, engage & qualify leads to build your book of business.

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Web Chat

The best channel for sales, service & support by utilizing bots, humans, or both.

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Smith.ai is trusted by 3,000+ businesses

5.0 stars

4.9 stars

5.0 stars

4.7 stars

“Smith.ai is a valuable resource during our transition to a hybrid workforce. Their receptionists help us improve our workflow and gain back our time to focus on caring for our patients.”

Dr. Claire-Marie Bender

Colorado Snoring and Sleep Apnea Center

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TALK TO OUR TEAM of experts

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Improve customer experiences with 24/7 engagement. We offer features and pricing for organizations of all sizes.

North America-based agents
Best-in-class AI technology
Live-staffed website chat
Bilingual services
Sales development & outreach
Rich call intelligence

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END-TO-END INTEGRATIONS

We play well with your software

Calls, chats & appointments are automatically logged in your systems. Real-time syncing with over 5,000 integrations.

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end-to-end integrations

We play well with your legal software

All activities — from calls and chats to appointments and payments — logged in your firm's preferred software.

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Frequently asked questions

The best dental answering services do much more than pick up phone calls and take messages for medical professionals. At Smith.ai, we provide virtual receptionists capable of a wide range of services from call handling, to scheduling, to lead intake, to website chat, and more. Whether you need a virtual receptionist for full-time call handling, overflow support only, after-hours, or triage, here are the answers to the most common questions we receive from dentists, orthodontists, and other dental professionals.

Over the course of their lives, everybody will need a dentist. Whether they've chipped a tooth, need a root canal, or would just like to keep up with regular teeth cleaning, clients will keep dentists' schedules booked. But while dentists are busy filling in cavities or fitting clients' for retainers, dental teams will likely miss important phone calls from interested new clients. But with a dental answering service like Smith.ai, lead qualification and intake can be taken care of along with other time-consuming administrative duties. A reliable answering service takes the pressure off of dental teams by providing custom support wherever they need most. From 24/7 call answering and appointment scheduling to quality lead screening and payment collecting, dental offices who use an answering service can check more off their to-do list without lifting a single finger. A couple of the benefits that dentists have experienced thanks to an answering service include:

Expanded availability

With an answering service that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, your clients will always speak with a real human being, never a robot. If your team isn't able to pick up the call, a trained and knowledgeable agent will, giving your clients’ questions a thoughtful, educated response and enjoyable customer experience every time they reach out to your business.

Increased leads captured

Missed calls mean missed opportunities. Don’t lose out on another leads just because you’re too busy to pick up the phone. Answering services provide evening, weekend, and after-hours availability, so whether your office is closed, busy, or otherwise unavailable, you'll never have to miss another call, or another potential client.

Increased work productivity

By entrusting an answering service with your calls, your teams' schedule will be free from the burden of tedious administrative duties, like appointment booking. Less time spent on the phone means more time spent on productive work. An answering service allows your dental office to get more real work done. Get ready to welcome more growth opportunities for your business.

Enhanced client satisfaction and business reputation

At Smith.ai, we know how to deliver outstanding customer service, so no matter what business type and industry, we can create memorable customer experiences for your callers. Our virtual receptionists are well-trained in customer service and hospitality, so let us put best practices to work for you and deliver the exceptional responsiveness you'd like to be known for.

Save money and time

Dentists who use Smith.ai can save upwards of $30,000/year. For a fraction of the cost of an in-house receptionist, dentists can receive all the benefits of a dozen highly-trained professionals, and then some. Answering services provide more comprehensive coverage for less, giving your office more bang for your buck.

Stay up-to-date with leads and clients

Answering services like Smith.ai can send your dental team detailed call summaries after each call and even provide your clients with chat and text messaging, so you can always stay in contact with your most valued clients.

A dental answering service can provide your business with much needed relief, whether your team is on a budget, overwhelmed by overflow calls, or simply looking to enrich your company’s customer service. With Smith.ai’s answering service, your dental office can receive even more benefits to help your company accomplish its goals, whatever they may be.

Smith.ai’s answering service can provide dentists with…

24/7 availability

After-hours & overflow answering

Bilingual answering

Outbound call-backs

Spam blocking

Appointment scheduling

Sales development

Payment collection

CRM Integration

Lead development

And much more…‍

With plenty of convenient features, Smith.ai’s answering service is guaranteed to grow your office's productivity, revenue, and outreach. Smith.ai has offered quality service to dental offices like yours for years and our clients trust Smith.ai, and only Smith.ai, to provide their business with the premium support they can count on. Read our 5-star reviews to learn why dentists around the world prefer Smith.ai for their administrative support.

The cost of "front desk" support can understandably be an important factor in any professional's decision to hire some administrative assistance. Keeping costs lows and quality high is crucial, but with an in-house receptionist, you may not get the most bang for your buck. To give you insight into the cost comparisons, we've created a brief list of some of the average expenses dentists can anticipate when hiring an in-house receptionist.

The average salary nationwide for an in-house receptionist is about $37,000 and they often come with huge, often hidden or unspoken fees, such as:

Medical, dental, and vision insurance, costing about $11,000/year
Life and disability insurance, costing about $2,000/year
401K’s, retirement and pension plans, costing about $2,000/year
Paid sick leave, holidays, and vacations, costing about $5,500/year
Commuting reimbursement, costing about $5,000/year
Child care subsidy and parental leave, costing about $3,000/year
Health and wellness programs, costing about $1,000/year
Bonus pay, costing about $2,000/year
Company retreats, team bonding events, and employee outings, costing about $4,000/year
Free lunch, snacks, and drinks, costing about $3,500/year

Total Cost, Including Salary: $77,000/year

If your dental office is located in a major city, you may be stuck paying even more. And don't forget: your new-hire is only human. They will inevitably come in late, call in sick, request time off, take personal leaves of absence, go on vacation, etc. This means your business won't be getting as much as you'd expect for the investment. Contrarily, Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists can accomplish the same tasks as an in-house receptionist and then some. Barring coffee runs and supply restocks, virtual receptionists can address your call answering, appointment scheduling, and other administrative needs, while providing services in-house receptionists simply can't offer, like 24/7, after-hours, and overflow answering, or free spam blocking. Plus, Smith.ai is much more affordable than an in-house receptionist.

Smith.ai’s answering service costs as little as $285/month, with no hidden fees. Ever. By hiring an answering service instead of an in-house receptionist, your business could save over $33,000/year on salary alone, and possibly up to $40,000/year in benefits beyond salary payments. Not only will your dental office save thousands, but your productivity and net profit will skyrocket as well. Unlike in-house receptionists, virtual receptionists can answer calls outside of normal operating hours, enabling your office to capture and covert nearly 27% more leads. Smith.ai’s agents can also answer live chats and texts, which is how 46% of customers prefer communicating with businesses.

Virtual receptionists can even provide sales assistance by making outbound calls to convert more leads, satisfying the over 67% of clients who base their decision to hire a business on the initial responsiveness to their call or email. With leads receiving immediate, professional responses, there's no limit to the amount of leads your team will be able to convert. With Smith.ai’s trusted dental answering service, your team can enjoy the benefits of several in-house receptionists without the cost. Check out our article to learn more about the differences between an in-house vs. a virtual receptionist.

Keeping a dental office up and running requires teams to have their hands full. From implementing daily office procedures to executing long-term business development projects, dentist have more than enough on their plate to attend to, let alone the quality medical services they're expected to provide. With fast-paced work environments like this, it can be challenging to manage such a demanding workload week after week. Outsourced support can be a valuable tool in helping dentists stay on top of growing administrative demands and effectively handle any challenges that their dental teams don't have the time or bandwidth to tackle themselves. A few of the most common scenarios we've noticed dentists require virtual receptionist services for are:

I need “front desk” support, but simply can't afford it

“Front desk” support can relieve dental teams of the constant pressures of administrative upkeep. With a limited budget, however, many dental offices can't afford to dish out thousands on traditional front desk support, such as in-house receptionists or call centers, that often are far too pricey, unreliable, and ineffective to be worth the investment.

Constant phone call interruptions keep me and my team from completing real work

Calls come in whether your team is available to answer them or not. When dental teams frequently have to interrupt client appointments and cleanings just to pick up the phone, they can easily lose focus on their more urgent duties. And when it takes, on average, about 23 minutes to get back to a task after being interrupted by a phone call, the quality of their service is sure to take a huge hit, and clients will take note.

Growing demands are overwhelming my team

While business growth can be great for a number of reasons, it can present a unique challenge for your team. With more calls that need to be answered, more appointments that need to be scheduled, and more invoices that need to be sent out, dental teams can quickly get overwhelmed trying to balance their new workload with their existing duties, causing productivity to plummet.

I can’t offer around-the-clock availability to answer calls

When the work day ends, dental teams deserve to go home and enjoy their free time away from clients, but just because your office shuts down for the night doesn't mean calls stop coming in. When your team isn't available to pick up the phone, leads can and will be missed, as over 27% of leads call outside of normal business hours. Dental offices may be interested in offering after-hours answering, but with limited operating hours, budgets, and staff, it can prove an impossible feat.

If your dental office has experienced one or more of these scenarios, an answering service can be an affordable and reliable solution to your problems. By outsourcing overwhelming administrative tasks directly to a professional answering service, you can take these time-consuming duties off your teams' plate, keeping them from wasting their precious in-office hours on unproductive work, and still address your growing customer support demands. Whether you need call handling, appointment scheduling, and payment collecting support, Smith.ai's virtual receptionists can accomplish everything an in-house receptionist or call-center can, and then some. From 24/7 after-hours and overflow call answering to quality lead screening and intaking, Smith.ai can provide comprehensive customer support around-the-clock, so your callers are always in good hands.

Let's be honest: your team is not superhuman. They can't (and shouldn't) be expected to fix every single problem that comes your office's way. But an answering service sure can. Outsourcing to a reliable answering service like Smith.ai allows a team of highly-trained professionals to take over the administrative responsibilities your team struggles to keep up with, whether that's around-the-clock responsiveness or detailed call tracking. Answering services offer a blanket of support, so regardless of the challenges your team faces, you can rest easy knowing an answering service can provide the superior manpower and advanced tools your dental office needs to weather any storm. Some of the most frequently reported problems that dental offices like yours face are:

I can’t answer all of the incoming calls and messages I receive from clients

With a limited staff and nonstop appointments, projects, and other urgent duties to attend to, dental teams often struggle to pick up the phone in time. This means clients, new and old, are left on hold or in the hands of a voicemail box. Dental teams' lead conversion and client retention rates won't survive if customer service is constantly neglected, but teams can't just drop their more important work, like a client's cleaning, just to answer the phone. Rock, meet a hard place.

I’m spending my entire day on administrative tasks and can’t get productive, real work done

With the price of in-house receptionists being as high as it is, businesses are often left to delegate daily tasks themselves. Despite spending a large portion of their day performing administrative duties, teams often struggle to balance their important projects with their regular office tasks.

I’m losing out on new business leads due to missed calls and it's costing me money

Responding to each call can feel impossible for medical and wellness businesses when they have higher priority assignments to address. Businesses can easily fall behind on responding to new inquiries so potential leads can be frequently missed. Leads don't wait for call-backs. They call the next business in the search results. If businesses fail to pick up, they not only lose a lead, they lose ROI, money on marketing campaigns and ad spend, as well as conversion rates from ads.

I can’t reply fast enough to leads to beat my competition to new clients

With a competitive market, it can be a major obstacle for dental offices to distinguish themselves and their services amongst their competitors. It can be so easy to fade into the crowd. Providing quality customer service through quick and thoughtful responses can place businesses in good standing with clients, but many dental offices lack the time to deliver the responsiveness their leads expect, causing them to lose out on a number of lead conversion opportunities.

I’m struggling to find and keep new clients

One of the most crucial, yet challenging aspects of growing a successful business is finding and converting new clients. With so much time and effort being spent towards existing clients, however, most dental offices have little time to seek out and nurture new clients. Slow response times, inconsistent answering, and poor quality phone assistance won't do much to help those struggling dental offices keep their current clients.

My clients’ data is difficult to keep track of

Understanding how, when, and why clients call is crucial for any business hoping to successfully navigate and grow their client relationships, but unfortunately, is not always easy to accomplish. Maintaining detailed phone records and call data can be a challenging demand for dental offices who disperse client data across a multitude of software platforms. And when data is mismanaged or lost, dental offices miss out on numerous lead conversion and client retention opportunities.

Sound familiar? If your dental office has previously or is currently facing any of these challenges, a virtual receptionist service may be the answer you've been searching for. One of the many notable aspects of Smith.ai is that our services fit your business needs, not the other way around. Our virtual receptionists can allocate time where you need it most and address the specific issues your business face, whether that's qualifying and intaking new clients or sending invoices and collecting payments. Sign up risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee and see how Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists can address the problems your dental office struggles to overcome.

Pinpointing what services your dental office could benefit from the most is always a good place to start. To figure out which services you might need, ask yourself what problems or opportunities your team consistently struggles with that a virtual receptionist service can address. For instance:

Could your team use some call handling support?
Does your office have trouble collecting payments from forgetful or avoidant clients?
Do you struggle to respond to leads in a timely manner?

We customize our support to fit around your business needs, so whatever administrative tasks your team is challenged with the most, Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists can adjust their service to effectively tackle the most frustrating problems your dental office is plagued by.

After that, consider what services would best fit your company’s activity level:

Does your business receive hundreds of calls a day or just a few?
Do you notice your dental office receives more text messages than phone calls?
Would your team benefit from 24/7 phone answering or would you prefer a particular time frame, such as 9-to-5, for answering calls?

Whether you get twenty calls a month or 2,000, Smith.ai can customize your virtual receptionist service to fit your business activity so you only pay for what you need.

All you have to do next is sign up. Getting started with Smith.ai’s virtual receptionist service is simple and fast. No annual contracts, no setup fees, and no need to supply scripts.

Follow three simple steps:

Customize your instructions – Just answer a few, quick questions about your firm and the preferences you have and we’ll get you started. We’ll use your answers to customize the way our virtual receptionists answer your calls and your clients’ questions.
Send your calls to us – We work with every phone system and can set up customized rules for when we answer your calls. Or we can answer every call, 24/7!
Try risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee – Fully experience our call answering, scheduling, payments, and other phone services completely risk free for 14 days. If we're not the right fit for you, get your money back up to $1,000 within the first 14 days.

Whether your business is looking for a full-time virtual receptionist or an overflow or occasional phone answering service, Smith.ai can offer customized assistance to your team with quality customer service, lead screening, and sales development. When you sign up with Smith.ai, you won’t just be gaining a virtual receptionist service, you’ll be gaining a professional, reliable, and friendly team who are guaranteed to transform your business by capturing leads and delighting current clients.

‍Learn how to get started with Smith.ai’s virtual receptionist service.

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24/7 VIRTUAL RECEPTIONISTS

Answering service for dentists and orthodontists

Incoming calls are unpredictable.

Take care of teeth cleanings while we handle the calls.

Powerful call intelligence gives your business the lead

Outreach calls and campaigns speed-up sales and support

Capture and book appointments with 24/7 Live Chat.

Get the most out of Smith.ai

Outreach Campaigns

Web Chat

Smith.ai is trusted by 3,000+ businesses

TALK TO OUR TEAM of experts

Book a consultation

END-TO-END INTEGRATIONS

We play well with your software

end-to-end integrations

We play well with your legal software

Frequently asked questions

What are the benefits of a dental answering service?

How much money will I save by hiring an answering service for my dentist office compared to an in-house receptionist?

What common scenarios do dental offices use virtual receptionist services for?

What are the common problems that indicate my dental office needs a virtual receptionist service?

What do I need to prepare to get started with a dental virtual receptionist service?

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