A receptionist for the dental chair you can't get out of

A realistic call, the way Giday runs it in restricted mode:

Giday: Giday, you've reached Riverside Dental — Verity speaking, on a recorded line. How can I help you?

Caller: Hi, we've just moved to the area and I'm after a check-up and clean for me and the two kids.

Giday: Lovely, welcome to the area. Are you after three appointments back to back, or separate days?

Caller: Back to back if you can, a Saturday would be great.

Giday: I've got Saturday the 18th from 9 am, three slots in a row. Shall I lock those in?

Caller: Yes please. Oh — one of the kids has a tooth that's been giving him grief, is that going to be a problem?

Giday: I'm not the right one to talk to about that side of things, but the dentist will look at it on the day. Can I take your name and the best mobile for the confirmation?

Three appointments in the calendar, a text to the caller, a text and email to you. The tooth that's giving him grief was heard, not written down. The dentist hears it from the patient.

Tick yes to the health question at signup and the receptionist runs in restricted mode from its first call. Concretely:

• It won't discuss anything clinical. Pain, swelling, a chipped tooth, a filling, whitening, braces, what a procedure involves, or what anything costs if that isn't on your published list — it lets the caller finish, says kindly that it isn't the right one for that side, and gets them to the dental practice.
• Clinical detail is never written down. A message about a health matter records only that the caller would like a call back, plus their name and number — and whether they said it was urgent, so you know which call to return first. The note will not say "toothache, upper left, three days"; it will say "urgent — call back about a health matter". A booking carries the appointment type from your own list — "check-up and clean", "emergency appointment", "new patient consult" — never the tooth.
• No advice, of any kind. Not "that can wait", not "that sounds fine", not "you should come in". If asked, it says plainly that it isn't qualified.
• Nothing is kept at the voice provider. For restricted practices the call audio is not recorded at all and the written transcript is deleted rather than kept. It will tell a caller exactly that if they ask.
• Ordinary reception still works normally. Appointments, reschedules, cancellations, hours, location, parking, whether you're taking new patients, and any fee you've published as a fixed price. The actual job of a front desk.

Name your people on the settings page and give anyone their own hours. From then on a caller can ask for a person by name, the receptionist offers only that person's times, and the booking lands on their diary. Someone who doesn't mind gets the first free time with anyone. Each person can also hand Giday a calendar feed of their own, and busy time in it is never offered for them.

A knocked-out tooth at 7 pm is urgent. The receptionist handles urgency the way you set at signup: offer the earliest appointment you've made available, or take a call-back marked urgent and text you immediately, or put the caller through to the on-call number if you've given one. What it won't do is judge how bad it is.

Danger to life or limb is a different rule, and it outranks everything. If a caller describes anything that sounds like it — trouble breathing, severe bleeding that won't stop, a collapse — the receptionist stops whatever it was doing. You choose how that call is handled, at signup or on your settings page:

• Tell them to hang up and ring triple zero (000), hang up so their line is free, and text you at once. The default.
• Put them through to your emergency contact first and tell them to ring 000 if that rings out.
• Say your own words first then tell them to ring 000.

Whichever you choose, it does not ring 000 for them, never implies help is on the way, errs heavily on the side of acting, and texts you every time. This rule exists only in restricted mode; Giday is not an emergency service for any client.

Every Giday call opens with the greeting above: on a recorded line. That sentence is inside the greeting and can't be switched off, by us or by you. For a restricted dental practice the audio is then not actually kept and the transcript is deleted — the notice stays because a patient is owed that sentence more than anyone.

What reaches you: a text and an email per call with the booking or the call-back request. Not a transcript, not a summary of what was said about teeth. Your privacy obligations under the Privacy Act stay yours, as they would with any receptionist; ours is to hold as little as possible and to have written down exactly what the service does — the medical page, the recording-law guide and the data handling page are the long version.

• Overflow. Your desk keeps answering; Giday picks up what rings out while you're with a patient.
• Before open and after close. Divert at close, divert back at open. The 7:50 am rebook is in the calendar before you've unlocked.
• All the time. The sole practitioner with no front desk.

Bookings land in your calendar through a subscription feed any calendar app reads. There is no link into practice software yet — if you run Dentally, Praktika, Oasis or Core Practice, bookings reach you by calendar and by text, not inside those systems. Health-fund claiming and HICAPS are nothing to do with the phone and stay exactly as they are.

Every plan answers 24/7, books into your calendar and takes messages. The difference is minutes and machinery.

All prices AUD, GST included. Month to month, no lock-in. A one-off big month is billed as the cheapest plan that covers it, never as runaway overage.

Sixty minutes of call time on us, for a week. Card up front, nothing charged, and the clock doesn't start until your receptionist answers its first call. Tick yes to the health question and it runs restricted from the first ring.