The parent who finally rang
A referral from a general dentist, or a child self-conscious about their teeth. Calling once, on a break, and booking whoever answers. Worth a full course of treatment plus, frequently, a sibling.
Orthodontics
You are selling a two-year commitment to somebody on a lunch break
Megan answers when a parent finally rings about their child's teeth, books the consult while they are still on the line, and handles the broken brackets in between.
Their dentist mentioned it at a check-up in March. It is now September.
The general dentist said the crowding would need looking at and handed over a card. The mother put it in a kitchen drawer. It has been in that drawer through the summer, and now school photos are coming up, her daughter has started covering her mouth when she laughs, and she is finally going to ring somebody about it.
She does it at 12:40, standing in a car park on her lunch break, because that is the only twenty minutes she has. She rings the practice on the card. It rings out — your front desk is at lunch, or with a patient, or on the other line with a mother whose son has a bracket off.
She does not ring back tomorrow. She googles orthodontists near her, books a free consult with whoever answers, and in nine days she signs a twenty-four-month contract there.
That is the whole shape of orthodontic acquisition and it is unforgiving in a way general dentistry is not. A dental patient who cannot reach you might drift back. An orthodontic parent will not, because the consult is free everywhere, every practice offers one, and there is no reason on earth to chase the one that did not answer.
And the number attached to that call is not an appointment. It is a full course of treatment — two years of scheduled visits, a payment plan, retainers afterwards, and very often a sibling behind her.
Meanwhile your phone is not mostly ringing with new consults. It is ringing with existing patients: a bracket off on a Sunday, a wire poking a cheek, a mother needing to move Thursday's adjustment because of a school trip. Those are the calls that fill the line, and they are the reason the consult call rings out.
The calls
Mostly patients in treatment, occasionally the call that matters most
An orthodontic line is dominated by people already in braces. The new consult arrives rarely and is worth more than everything else combined.
The bracket that came off
Usually a Sunday, usually something they were told not to eat. Rarely an emergency and always distressing to a parent who does not know whether it matters. Needs a calm answer and, often, an earlier appointment.
The poking wire
A distal end digging into a cheek, and a teenager who cannot eat properly. Genuinely uncomfortable, entirely fixable, and the caller wants to know what to do until they can be seen.
The appointment shuffle
The highest-volume call on the line by far. A two-year treatment course means twenty-odd appointments per patient, every one of which can collide with a school trip, a sports fixture or a parent's shift.
The payment plan question
A parent querying an autopay, asking to change a card, or wanting to know what is left on the balance. Financial rather than clinical, and it must reach the right person rather than a clinician.
The referring general dentist
A GP's office sending a patient, or querying timing on an extraction sequence. A professional relationship that supplies a large share of your consults and is damaged by being treated as an enquiry.
The aligner shopper
Somebody comparing you against a direct-to-consumer aligner company and asking why they should pay more. A real objection deserving a real answer, and one that has to be handled without disparaging anybody.
The retainer call
A retainer lost, broken, or a patient two years out whose teeth have started shifting. Small ticket, easy to schedule, and the calls that keep a finished patient in your orbit.
Parents call in the gaps of their own working day
Orthodontic new-patient calls are made by working parents, which means they arrive in three narrow windows: before eight in the morning, at lunchtime, and between five and seven in the evening. Your practice is typically open for one and a half of those.
The lunchtime window is the sharpest problem, because it collides directly with your own front desk being at lunch. A parent standing in a car park at 12:40 with twenty minutes is the single most convertible caller you get, and it is the hour your phone is least likely to be answered.
Then there is the seasonal shape, which is more pronounced in orthodontics than almost any healthcare specialty. Consult volume spikes at the start of summer, when parents want treatment underway before the school year, and again in the weeks after school photographs and school dental screenings. Both are predictable and both arrive faster than a front desk can absorb.
The in-treatment calls follow a different rhythm entirely: broken brackets and poking wires happen on weekends and evenings, because that is when children eat what they were told not to. Those callers are anxious rather than urgent, and a practice with a recorded message leaves a parent worrying all weekend about something that is almost always fine until Tuesday.
What answers today is a front desk stretched across scheduling a two-year treatment course for several hundred active patients. That is genuinely a lot of appointment administration, and it is why the consult call — the one worth a full course of treatment — is the one that rings out.
Value a consult at the contract, not at the appointment
The unit here is a case, not a visit. A full orthodontic course is a substantial contracted sum paid over roughly two years, and you know yours. That is what a missed consult call is actually worth — and frequently more, because siblings follow siblings and a family that starts one child with you generally starts the second.
So do the arithmetic on the right number. Pull inbound against answered for the lunch hour and for five to seven in the evening, specifically. Most practices have never looked at those two bands in isolation and are startled, because the volume is not large — it is the value per call that is large.
The conversion reality makes it worse. A parent ringing about their child's teeth will book a consult with whoever answers, because consults are free at every practice in your market. There is no differentiation to protect you and no reason for them to try you twice. Being unavailable at 12:40 is functionally the same as not existing.
The second economic mechanism is retention, and it runs through the in-treatment calls. A two-year course means twenty-odd appointments per patient, all of which are subject to school trips and shift changes, and a parent who cannot reach you to move one is a parent whose experience of your practice is friction. Orthodontics runs heavily on parent-to-parent referral, and that referral is earned in the boring calls, not in the consult.
Third, the aligner objection. Your genuine competition for a share of your market is direct-to-consumer clear aligners and simply not starting treatment. Both are beaten by a practice that is easy to talk to at the moment a parent is finally motivated, and neither is beaten by a recording.
Against all of it, answering is billed by the second Megan is talking. An appointment change is ninety seconds; a consult booking is a few minutes.
Pay As You Go is $29 a month plus $0.88 for each minute Megan spends on calls, with no included minutes. Professional is $199 a month and includes 500 minutes, then $0.45 a minute. Growth is $499 a month and includes 1,500 minutes, then $0.38 a minute. Enterprise is priced by conversation. Every plan includes the entire product — the plans differ by included minutes only — and calls are billed in real seconds, never rounded up to the next minute.
Example call
An example call
Wednesday, 12:40pm. Megan does not know yet whether this is a new parent, a patient in treatment or a referring office.
Example call12:40 PM · Wednesday
MeganThank you for calling Marchetti Orthodontics, this is Megan, an AI assistant. How can I help you today?
- Caller
Hi — our dentist said back in the spring that my daughter's teeth are crowded and we should get her looked at. I've been meaning to call for months. I've only got about fifteen minutes, sorry.
- Megan
No need to apologise, that's plenty. Our consultations are complimentary and they're about an hour with the orthodontist. How old is your daughter, and is she still in school hours during the week?
- Caller
She's eleven, and yes — I really can't take her out of school if I can avoid it.
- Megan
Understood. We hold late-afternoon slots for exactly that. I've got a Thursday at 4:15 in two weeks, or a Saturday morning next month. Would either work? And if you have the dentist's referral or any recent X-rays, bring them — it saves repeating anything.
- Caller
Thursday at 4:15 is perfect. Thank you, I've been putting this off forever.
Complimentary consult booked for a 4:15pm after-school slot, with the referring dentist noted and the family asked to bring existing radiographs — captured in a fifteen-minute lunch break that would otherwise have been a rung-out phone.
An illustration of how Megan handles this kind of call, not a recording of one. Her opening line is the disclosure she actually speaks.
How it fits
How this fits a practice managing hundreds of active courses
1
The consult gets booked on the call, into an after-school slot
A parent who hangs up with a date has crossed the line; one who is told somebody will ring back has not, and will book elsewhere. Megan books into the slots you reserve for consults — and in orthodontics the after-school and Saturday slots are what actually convert, because taking a child out of school is a barrier most parents will not clear.
2
In-treatment calls stop consuming the front desk
Twenty-odd appointments per patient across two years, multiplied by several hundred active patients, is an enormous amount of rescheduling. That volume is precisely why the consult call rings out. Megan absorbs it.
3
Bracket and wire calls get calm handling and a real answer
A parent on a Sunday does not know whether a loose bracket matters. You define what warrants an earlier appointment and what waits until the next scheduled visit, and Megan follows it — without assessing anything clinically. A parent who is told plainly that it is fine until Tuesday stops worrying, which is most of what they rang for.
4
Financial calls go to the right desk
Payment plan questions, card changes, balance queries — these are neither clinical nor scheduling, and routing them to a clinician wastes everybody's time. They reach whoever handles your contracts.
5
Referring dentists are treated as colleagues
A general dentist's office sending a patient or querying an extraction sequence supplies a large share of your consults. Those calls are routed as the professional relationships they are, not run through a booking script.
The limits, and the compliance question you own
She does not give clinical advice. Not whether a loose bracket needs an earlier visit, not what to do about a poking wire beyond what your practice has told her to say, not whether treatment is needed at all, and never anything about pain or swelling. Those route to a clinician on the rules you set.
She does not quote treatment fees or terms. Orthodontic pricing depends on the case, the appliance and the length of treatment, and a number given before an exam becomes a conversation you have to walk back at the consult. She can say the consultation is complimentary, because that is a fact about your practice.
She does not compare your treatment to a direct-to-consumer aligner product or comment on its clinical suitability. That is a conversation for the orthodontist, and a receptionist disparaging a competitor is a bad look regardless of who is right.
And on compliance: **we make no claim that Megan is a HIPAA-compliant way to handle protected health information, and we do not offer a business associate agreement.** Whether an AI receptionist fits your practice's obligations — what it collects, what is recorded and transcribed, where that is held — is an evaluation your practice makes against your own requirements and your own counsel's advice. We will describe exactly how the system works so the assessment can be a real one. Many orthodontic practices configure Megan to handle scheduling-level information only and route anything clinical to staff.
Questions
Orthodontists: the questions we get asked
Won't parents be put off getting an AI when they call about their child?
Megan says she is an AI assistant in her opening sentence, so no parent is deceived. The comparison that decides it is the one available at 12:40 on a Wednesday, which is when these calls are actually made — a working parent in a car park with fifteen minutes, while your front desk is at lunch. The alternative is a phone that rings out, and that parent does not try again tomorrow; consults are free everywhere and she books with whoever answers. What she gets from Megan is a complimentary consult booked into an after-school slot in the time she had. Where these systems irritate people is when they cannot understand a caller and will not put them through, which is why the clinical transfer rules matter more than the greeting.
Is this HIPAA compliant? Will you sign a BAA?
We make no claim that Megan is a HIPAA-compliant way to handle protected health information, and we do not offer a business associate agreement — and we would rather be blunt about that here than have you discover it later. Whether an AI receptionist fits your obligations depends on what it collects, what is recorded and transcribed, where it is stored, and what your compliance requirements and counsel say. That is your practice's evaluation to make, not a warranty we provide. We will describe exactly how the system works so you can make it properly. Many orthodontic practices deliberately keep the arrangement narrow — scheduling-level information only, with anything clinical routed to staff.
What happens when a parent calls on Sunday about a broken bracket?
They get a calm human answer rather than a recording, which is most of what that call is for. A parent whose child has a bracket off usually does not know whether it matters, and the honest answer is that it very often waits until the next working day. You define what warrants an earlier appointment and what does not, and Megan follows your rules — she does not assess anything clinically. A poking wire that is cutting a cheek is different and routes to a clinician on whatever rule you set. Either way the parent stops worrying, which is worth more to your reputation than the appointment is.
Can she quote our treatment fees?
No. Orthodontic pricing depends on the case, the appliance, the length of treatment and often the payment plan, and a figure given before anybody has examined the patient becomes something you have to walk back at the consult — which is a poor way to start a two-year relationship. What she can say is that the consultation is complimentary, because that is a fact about your practice, and that is usually the only thing standing between a hesitant parent and an appointment.
Most of our calls are existing patients rescheduling. Is that a good use of this?
It is the reason the consult call currently rings out. A two-year course means around twenty appointments per patient, and with several hundred active patients that is a genuinely large volume of rescheduling colliding with school trips, sports fixtures and shift changes. Absorbing it is what frees your front desk for the calls where a human matters — and it also improves the in-treatment experience, because a parent who can always get through to move an appointment is a parent who refers other parents. In orthodontics the referral is earned in those boring calls.
How does she handle someone comparing us to mail-order aligners?
Honestly and without disparaging anybody, which is the only version that works. She does not offer a clinical opinion on a competitor's product — that is the orthodontist's conversation and a receptionist having it is a bad look regardless of who is right. What she does is capture the objection, state whatever factual differences you have given her about your own treatment, and get them into a complimentary consult where the question can actually be answered by somebody qualified. A caller who was expecting a sales pitch and instead gets a straight answer has already learned something useful about your practice.
Can she coordinate with our referring general dentists?
Those calls are routed as the professional relationships they are. A general dentist's office sending a patient, or querying timing on an extraction sequence before appliance placement, is not an enquiry and should never meet a booking script. A large share of your consults originate there, and being easy for a referring practice to deal with is worth considerably more than any marketing you could buy.
Does she send appointment reminders by text?
No. Megan works over the phone and the record of every call reaches you by email — transcript, recording and summary. Text messaging is not part of the product yet. For a practice managing twenty appointments per patient across two years, texted reminders are a significant part of no-show control, so that limitation deserves weighing before you sign up.
Related
Megan answers for these businesses too
Dental Offices
Your front desk is staffed and still missing calls. It is 10:40 on a Tuesday.
Read more →Oral Surgeons
Your referring dentists are your customers. They ring once, mid-appointment, with a patient in the chair.
Read more →Pediatric Dentists
Your patient is six. Your caller is a parent with a car full of children and eleven minutes.
Read more →A card from a dentist has been in somebody's kitchen drawer since March.
Pay As You Go is $29 a month plus $0.88 for each minute Megan spends on calls, with no included minutes. Professional is $199 a month and includes 500 minutes, then $0.45 a minute. Growth is $499 a month and includes 1,500 minutes, then $0.38 a minute. Enterprise is priced by conversation. Every plan includes the entire product — the plans differ by included minutes only — and calls are billed in real seconds, never rounded up to the next minute.
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