The patient in pain at 9pm is not going to leave a voicemail
Toothache does not respect office hours, and someone searching for an emergency dentist on a Sunday evening will contact whichever practice responds. Mazingi answers on your website immediately, establishes whether they are in pain, whether they are new, and what insurance they carry — so Monday morning starts with a triaged list instead of a full voicemail box.
Free plan forever · paid from $29/month · one line of code
What an unanswered enquiry costs dental practices
Emergencies arrive when the practice is closed
Evenings and weekends generate the urgent enquiries and none of the staffing. Those patients call down the results page until somebody answers.
New patients are worth far more than a single appointment
A new patient is a multi-year relationship, and practices spend real money to attract them. Losing one to an unanswered form is the most expensive kind of miss there is.
Insurance questions consume the front desk
"Do you take my plan?" is the single most common enquiry a practice receives, and it occupies the person who should be checking patients in. It is also the easiest question in the world to answer from a page you already have.
The questions it asks, and why in that order
The dental template asks about pain and urgency before anything else — before new-patient status, before the reason for the visit. That order exists so a patient in genuine pain is never sitting behind three cleaning requests in your inbox. New or existing comes second because it routes to a different appointment length and a different person. Insurance provider comes before scheduling, because for a great many patients the answer to that question decides whether they book at all.
Every question is editable — the template is a starting point, not a fixed script.
Dental practice template — 8 questions
- 1What name should we put the request under?*
- 2What phone number is best to reach you?*
- 3Are you currently in pain or is this urgent?*
- 4Are you a new or existing patient?*
- 5What brings you in (cleaning & checkup, tooth pain, cosmetic, other)?*
- 6Do you have dental insurance, and if so, which provider?
- 7What days or times work best for an appointment?
- 8What email should we use for appointment confirmations?
* required before the lead is counted as qualified
How it sounds on your site
A dental answering service for the hours the practice is shut
A dental answering service costs you per call and, for the after-hours ones, tells the patient what they already know: someone will ring back tomorrow. Used as a virtual receptionist on your website, this asks about pain first, answers what your practice takes in the way of insurance and whether you are accepting new patients, and has the appointment request waiting when the front desk unlocks the door.
Questions dental practices ask
- Does it ask about pain first?
- Yes — before new-patient status and before the reason for the visit. Urgent enquiries arrive flagged, so a patient in pain is never queued behind routine cleaning requests.
- Can it answer insurance questions?
- It answers from your own insurance page and cites it, which handles the most common enquiry a practice gets without touching the front desk. It also captures which provider the patient named, so you can see the plans people keep asking about.
- Will it diagnose anything?
- No. It asks whether there is pain and how urgent it feels, which is scheduling triage rather than clinical assessment. It does not ask about symptoms, history or medication, and it will not speculate about what is wrong.
- Can it book directly into our scheduling software?
- Not yet. It captures the preferred days and times and delivers the enquiry by email, in the dashboard, and as CSV, so your front desk confirms the slot. Direct scheduling integrations are on the roadmap.
- What about patient privacy?
- The template collects administrative details only — name, contact, urgency, new-patient status, insurance provider and scheduling preference. Keeping clinical detail out of a website chat is a deliberate design decision, not a setting you have to remember to switch on.
- How does this compare with a dental answering service?
- Answering services bill per call and mainly take messages. This answers the common questions — new patients, insurance, hours, what a first visit involves — from your own material, triages pain, and books, at one flat price for every hour of the week.
- Can a virtual receptionist handle new patient enquiries properly?
- That is the enquiry it is best at: it asks whether they are new, what the problem is, and how they intend to pay, which is exactly the information your front desk needs before offering a slot. It never diagnoses.
Other industries
Stop losing the after-hours enquiries
Point it at your website, pick the dental practice template, paste one line of code.