Scenario · Dental practice
AI receptionist for dental practices.
An AI receptionist for a dental practice reads the new-patient, scheduling and paperwork enquiries that arrive while the desk is with a patient, drafts the logistics answer from your own material, and stops at everything clinical. One AI employee costs $149 a month on the Starter plan, and the practice keeps the send button.
It runs over text: a form or quiz posts to the lead endpoint and the enquiry is stored before anything else happens. Voice is custom scope on an Enterprise plan. Health-information obligations are scoped with you before a deployment starts, and the block below lists what the platform has and what it lacks.
Unistaff · Dental
Desk
What arrives at this desk
The mix below is the deployment shape this scenario is written around. The timing column is the reason the work slips: most of it lands while the room is busy or after everyone has gone home.
“Are you accepting new patients?”
Anytime
Appointment and reschedule requests
Evenings
Coverage and direct-billing questions
Weekday mornings
“How much is a cleaning and exam?”
Anytime
What to bring and what the forms ask
Before a first visit
Pre- and post-visit instructions
Around a visit
Pain, swelling, a broken tooth
Any hour
Parking, accessibility, hours
Anytime
What it takes on, what stays with a person
Read the person column as the job that remains, and staff for that job rather than for the whole desk. Every row matches what the platform does today.
| Task | AI employee | Person |
|---|---|---|
| “Are you accepting new patients?” | AI employeeAnswers from the line you wrote this month and carries the enquiry in as a record | PersonKeeps that line current |
| First reply to a scheduling request | AI employeeDrafts it with what the desk needs to book: the reason, the preferred window, and whether the person has been in before | PersonBooks it — no practice-management connector ships today |
| Coverage and direct billing | AI employeeLists the details your office needs in order to check coverage | PersonChecks it and states the amount |
| A fee for a cleaning or an exam | AI employeeMarks every number as pending your approval; the validator rejects a price without that marker | PersonConfirms the fee |
| Anything clinical — pain, medication, results | AI employeeStops, says why, and hands the message over with its wording intact | PersonThe clinician answers |
| Forms, parking, visit length, what to bring | AI employeeAnswers from your material and carries the passage it used | PersonKeeps the instructions current |
| The week at the desk | AI employeeJournals every run with its inputs, outcome and error text | PersonReviews the journal and corrects the brief |
Where it stops
Everything clinical, every coverage amount, results, cancellations with a fee attached, and anything about pain or medication.
What the owner keeps
The clinical judgement, the schedule and the send.
Where health information stops
A dental desk carries health information, so the honest part of this page is the list of what the platform has and what it lacks. Read it before the pricing.
- 01
The role works from an initial and the form answers. The full name, phone number and email address stay out of the prompt by design, and the contact record stays in the database the reply is sent from.
- 02
Anything clinical is a stop rule in the brief: the draft hands the message to a person and says why it stopped, and an urgent message reaches the practice by the route you already publish.
- 03
SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA controls and a signed BAA sit on the “not built yet” list on the security page. Nothing on this site claims otherwise.
- 04
Canadian privacy obligations — PIPEDA, and provincial health-privacy law where it applies — are scoped with you before a deployment starts rather than assumed.
- 05
Storage is encrypted at rest and in transit, operator access is signed and versioned, and integration credentials are encrypted. The security page lists every control with the evidence behind it.
Phone calls, honestly
Most pages selling an AI receptionist put a phone number in the hero. Text intake is what runs here today: a form or quiz posts to the lead endpoint, the enquiry is stored, and one email notification goes out with a five-second timeout — the enquiry reaches the database first, so a mail failure costs a log line while the record stays.
Voice is custom scope. The published plans are Starter at $149 a month, Scale at $599, and Enterprise at custom pricing; custom roles and custom workflows appear on the Enterprise column of the price table only. A voice desk starts as a scoping conversation about telephony, recording consent and who answers when the role stops.
The practical read: if most of your enquiries already arrive in writing, a text-first desk covers the volume today. If the desk lives on the phone, the first step is moving the repeat questions to a text channel and measuring what is left.
Web form and quiz intake
LiveThe enquiry is stored on submit, and the first reply is drafted on the next run.
Lead notification by email
LiveOne attempt with a five-second timeout; the outcome is logged either way.
Phone answering (voice)
Custom scope · EnterpriseCustom roles and custom workflows appear on the Enterprise column of the price table. A voice desk starts with telephony, recording consent and the handover rule.
Calendar booking
Scoped per deploymentNo calendar connector ships today, so live availability is scoped before launch.
SMS and messenger intake
Scoped per deploymentNo SMS or messenger connector ships today; the provider is chosen with you.
Full connector list with its evidence: /integrations
What it costs against the hours
The table is the site’s cost model run on this scenario. A dental front desk is a full-time job, so the hours here are a full week. The 55% is deliberately conservative: coverage and clinical questions stay with the office.
Read it as a comparison of hours. The share left over is the part of the desk that carries judgement — the exception, the upset customer, the decision — and it still needs a person. What changes is that the person spends the shift on those hours instead of retyping the same answers.
Model, except the price. Hours and share are assumptions; $149 is published
The brief this desk writes
Setup is a writing job. The role reads this material on every run, so the quality of the brief sets the quality of the drafts. An afternoon covers the first version, and the shadow week corrects it.
Whether you are accepting new patients this month, in one sentence.
What a first visit involves: length, what to bring, the forms, parking and access.
The details your office needs before it can check coverage.
Pre- and post-visit instructions you send most often, written once.
The stop rules: pain, medication, results, coverage amounts and fees.
Week one runs in shadow: every draft is read before it goes, and the material is corrected wherever the draft was wrong. At the end of it you have the share of drafts that went out unedited, which decides how much of the desk moves across next.
Questions people ask before they buy
HIPAA controls and a signed BAA are on the platform's “not built yet” list, published on the security page. A dental practice in Canada works under PIPEDA and provincial health-privacy law, and those obligations are scoped with you before a deployment starts. What exists today is documented control by control on that page.
Pain, swelling and trauma are stop rules. The message is stored the moment it arrives and the draft hands it to a person, pointing to the emergency route your practice already publishes. Voice is custom scope on an Enterprise plan, so an after-hours call goes wherever it goes today.
It prepares the booking with everything the desk needs, and a person enters it. Unistaff ships no practice-management or calendar connector today, so a deployment that depends on live availability starts by scoping that connection.
One AI employee is $149 a month on Starter. The comparison on this page models a 40-hour desk at a loaded $35 an hour and hands 55% of it across; the calculator takes your own numbers and shows the difference.
A person reads and sends every reply today, so what reaches the patient is your office writing with a head start. When a role starts replying directly, the disclosure goes into the template before that goes live.
The enquiry is stored on submit with the form answers attached, the draft is written from your material on the next run, and the run is journaled with its inputs and outcome. Data stays in your account, and export or deletion happens on request.
The same desk, another room
01
Coffee shop
The desk is a phone on the bar and an inbox nobody owns. Catering and hire enquiries arrive during the morning rush and get answered after close.
02
Salon or barbershop
Bookings and quote questions arrive while every chair is full. The reply that wins the booking is the one that goes out first.
04
Auto repair shop
The advisor is under a hood, the phone is on the counter, and every quote request needs six facts before anyone can price it.
05
Medical clinic
One person covers phones, check-in and scheduling. Requests that arrive during a consultation wait for a gap that never comes.
All five scenarios on one page: /resources/ai-front-desk