Dental Voice Agent: AI Receptionist
A fully automated phone receptionist for dental clinics — answers calls 24/7, books appointments to Google Calendar, and sends SMS confirmations to patients.
The Problem
Dental clinics miss calls — and missed calls mean missed bookings. After-hours inquiries go to voicemail, new patients hang up and call a competitor, and front desk staff spend a significant portion of their day on repetitive scheduling tasks.
The ask: an AI that picks up the phone, handles the full booking flow, and confirms the appointment — without any human involvement.
What It Does
- Answers calls 24/7: The AI receptionist picks up immediately, introduces itself, and guides the caller through the booking process in natural conversation.
- Checks real availability: Queries Google Calendar in real time to find open appointment slots and offers options to the caller.
- Books the appointment: Creates a Google Calendar event with patient name, phone number, email, and reason for visit — directly from the call.
- Sends SMS confirmation: Immediately after booking, texts the patient a confirmation with date, time, and clinic name.
- Sends appointment reminders: Automated SMS reminders at 48h and 24h before the appointment to reduce no-shows.
- Answers FAQ: Handles common questions — hours, location, insurance, parking — without transferring to staff.
How It Was Built
The full stack was designed for reliability, low latency, and easy deployment to any clinic:
- Vapi: Telephony layer — handles inbound calls, voice activity detection, and routes tool calls to the backend.
- Claude Sonnet (Anthropic): The LLM powering the conversation — understands intent, asks the right follow-up questions, and drives the booking flow.
- ElevenLabs: Natural-sounding voice synthesis. The receptionist sounds like a real person, not a robot.
- Google Calendar API: Reads availability and writes confirmed bookings directly to the clinic's calendar.
- Twilio SMS: Sends booking confirmations and automated reminders via text message.
- FastAPI + Render: Lightweight backend deployed on Render, handling all webhook events from Vapi.
Results
Tested live end-to-end: a real inbound call was handled by the agent, an appointment was created in Google Calendar, and an SMS confirmation was delivered — all within the duration of the call, with no human involvement.
Build time: one session. Setup for a new clinic: 1–2 days (connect their calendar, configure their FAQ, assign a phone number).