AI Receptionist gives your practice a voice- and SMS-based AI agent that handles patient interactions such as appointment questions, insurance information, staff escalation, and voicemail capture. Agents are set up and managed from a dedicated settings page under New Settings → AI → AI Receptionist.
Navigating to AI Receptionist Settings
Log in to your practice account.
In the left navigation panel, click AI.
Under AI Receptionist, click AI Receptionist.
If no agent exists yet, you’ll see a prompt to create one.
Multiple locations: each practice in a multi-location group needs its own AI Receptionist agent, set up separately from that location’s settings page.
Creating a New Agent
Setting up a new agent takes two steps. It’s automatically linked to your current practice, so there’s no separate assignment step. Once created, the agent is active immediately and ready to take calls — so it’s worth having your Knowledge Base and notification settings ready beforehand.
Step 1: Identity and Phone Number
Click “Get Started” to begin.
Agent Name: give your agent a short internal name (for example, “Angel”). “AI Receptionist” appears as a subtitle wherever the name is shown.
Phone number: choose an existing available number from the list (numbers marked “In Use” are already assigned), or switch to “Get a New Number” to purchase a new US or Canadian number by area code.
Step 2: Review and Create
Review the agent name, phone number, and connected practice. The practice is set automatically from your account and can’t be changed here.
Voice defaults to Rachel.
Click “Create Agent” to finish. You’ll land on the new agent’s Overview page, and it will be live immediately.
Managing Your Agent
Agent settings are organized into five tabs: Overview, Knowledge Base, Notifications, Settings, and Snoozed Numbers.
Overview Tab
Agent Identity: Agent Name (editable), Voice (dropdown, default Rachel), and the AI model in use (read-only — contact support to change it).
Connected Practice: shows which practice the agent is linked to and its sync status with your practice management system. This can’t be changed after setup.
Bot Response Settings (SMS only — these have no effect on voice calls):
Reply Mode: controls when the agent responds to texts — Anytime, Never (voice only), Business Off Hours, or Business Hours.
Default Snooze Time: how long a number stays snoozed after an escalation (default: 24 hours; also available: Forever or a custom duration).
Follow-up Count: how many follow-up texts the agent sends if a patient goes quiet mid-conversation (default: 1).
Follow-up Delay: how long the agent waits before each follow-up (default: 15 minutes).
Inbound Phone Number: the number patients call to reach this agent. You can select up to one number from the list or add a new one.
Voice Bot Toggle: turns the agent’s phone answering on or off.
On: the agent answers every call, handles greetings, booking questions, and escalations, and captures voicemails.
Off: calls are routed to your normal practice phone system instead.
Note: this only affects voice calls. Turning it off doesn’t stop the agent from texting that’s controlled separately by Reply Mode.
Knowledge Base Tab
The Knowledge Base is what the agent relies on to answer patient questions, so it’s worth completing as soon as you create the agent — it’s live from the moment it’s created, and incomplete sections mean it may give incomplete or inaccurate answers.
Each section shows a Complete or Incomplete status:
Once every section has content, the warning indicator on the Knowledge Base tab disappears.
Insurance & Payments: Accepted and non-accepted insurance plans, a verification note for patients, accepted payment methods, and financing options (e.g., CareCredit or payment plans).
Appointment Scheduling: General information about what to expect for a new patient appointment — typical duration and any prerequisites. (Separate from visit type setup, covered in the Visit Types article.)
FAQs: Practice-specific questions and their scripted answers.
Services: The services and treatments you offer, with a description, typical duration, and any prerequisites for each.
Notifications Tab
Controls who’s alerted when the agent escalates a call or captures a voicemail. Set this up as soon as you create the agent, since it starts generating alerts right away.
Email Notifications
Staff Members: search for and select users; their profile email receives alerts.
Additional Email Addresses: add outside addresses (for example, an office manager’s personal email) by typing and pressing Enter or comma.
SMS / Text Notifications
Staff Members: select users whose mobile numbers should get text alerts. They need a mobile number on file — a warning appears if they don’t.
Additional Phone Numbers: add outside numbers for text alerts.
Currently, every escalation and voicemail triggers a notification automatically — there isn’t a way to turn off individual event types yet.
Settings Tab
Welcome Message: customize the greeting your AI Receptionist uses to open a conversation. You can set separate messages for new and returning patients; the agent picks the right one automatically. If you clear a field and save, it reverts to the system default.
New Patient Message and Returning Patient Message both come pre-filled with a default greeting you can edit.
You can use two dynamic tokens in either message: {bot_name} (the agent’s name) and {practice_name} (your practice’s name). Tokens must be typed exactly as shown — anything else shows an error and blocks saving.
For example: “Hi, I’m {bot_name} from {practice_name}. How can I help you today?” would read out as “Hi, I’m Maya from Bright Smiles Dental. How can I help you today?”
A few rules apply to these messages:
Each field has an 800-character limit, shown as a live counter.
Markdown symbols (**, _, #) aren’t permitted.
HTML or voice tags (<b>, <br>, <speak>) aren’t permitted.
Any violation is flagged in red, and saving is blocked until it’s fixed.
The Settings tab also includes the Emergency Phone Number section, covered here.
Snoozed Numbers Tab
Shows any phone numbers temporarily opted out of AI Receptionist texts. The tab displays a count of currently snoozed numbers.
“Add Number” lets you manually snooze one.
Each entry shows the phone number, the matched patient’s name (if recognized), how long it’s snoozed for (or “Indefinite”), and the reason — patient requested, staff override, or do-not-contact.
You can edit the snooze duration or remove it at any time to resume texting that number.
