The chair is occupied.The phone rings anyway.
Voko answers during treatment, over lunch and after closing. Appointments get noted, urgent calls get flagged, and the practice gets a written summary of every call.
Voko, 11:04
“Rives Dental, hello. I'm the practice's assistant. How can I help?”
Patient, 11:04
“I've had really bad tooth pain since last night.”
Voko, 11:05
“I'm noting pain since last night, and I'll flag this to the practice as urgent right away. Could I take your name and a number to call back?”
Patient, 11:05
“Yes, Marc Berger, 079 000 00 00.”
Voko, 11:06
Urgent request sent to the practice, contact details recorded, summary sent.
The four calls that come in every day
Your front desk knows them by heart. Voko handles them when the line is busy.
Book or move an appointment
Voko offers the slots you have given it, notes the patient's choice, and passes the request on.
Take down dental pain
Voko listens, notes what is described, and flags the call as urgent. It does not judge severity, it reports it to you.
Answer practical questions
Opening hours, address, parking, what to bring to a first appointment. Only what you have written down.
Send a written summary
Who called, what they needed, what was agreed. Nothing to listen back to between patients.
A dental practice is a small business with a waiting room
Practice density has risen and competition with it. A patient who gets no answer calls the practice next door.
- 5,500
practising dentists in Switzerland, up from around 4,000 in 2009
- 4,300
dental practices or so, most of them very small
- 9/10
Swiss businesses have fewer than ten people, practices included
Sources: Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, dentist statistics; Swiss Federal Statistical Office. See the figures
These rules cannot be switched off
They are part of the base every Voko assistant is built on and are regenerated on every save, so editing the practice's own instructions cannot erase them.
The assistant never says whether pain is serious or what to do in the meantime. It notes and passes on.
Facial trauma, bleeding that will not stop: the assistant stops and points to emergency services.
What a crown costs is not something an assistant quotes on the phone. It notes the question and passes it to you.
If a patient asks whether they are speaking to a person, the answer is clear and immediate.
The practice's voicemail, and Voko
Toothache does not leave a message. It calls the next practice.
Voicemail
- The caller hears a recording and hangs up
- An emergency waits for the next check
- Nobody knows who called or why
- Messages get replayed one by one between treatments
Voko
- The caller has someone on the line
- An urgent request is flagged immediately
- Every call arrives written up
- The appointment is noted before you read the message
What practices ask before signing up
The questions that come up most often before a practice signs up.
Does the assistant judge how serious an emergency is?
No. It notes what the patient describes, flags the call as urgent, and passes it on. Clinical judgement always stays with the practice.
Can it quote the price of a treatment?
No, and that is a rule in the base, not a setting. A dental quote depends on an examination. The assistant notes the question and passes it to you.
Does this replace my front desk?
No. Voko takes the calls your front desk cannot: during treatment, over lunch, in the evening and at weekends. The rest is your job.
What happens to patient data?
You choose how long calls are kept and you can delete everything from your account at any time. The privacy page sets out how data is processed.
Can it transfer a call to the practice?
Yes, to a number you choose, with the condition that triggers it. Without a condition it does not transfer: that would just make the phone ring again, the exact thing you were trying to stop answering.
Call it the way a patient would.
Two minutes is enough to know whether the voice and tone fit your practice.