AI Frontdesk: an AI receptionist that answers, books, and triages calls
How the AI receptionist answers your phone 24/7, what it can and cannot do, how warm-transfer to live staff works, and how to read the call log.
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Your front desk, never asleep
Books visits, takes refills, triages calls - and warm-transfers anything it should not handle
AI Frontdesk is a voice agent that picks up your clinic's phone the moment it rings, identifies the caller's intent (booking, rescheduling, refill, intake, FAQ, or "I need a human"), and either resolves the call end-to-end or warm-transfers to whoever is on call. It runs around the clock — including holidays, after-hours, and lunch — and every interaction lands in the call log with a transcript and an outcome you can audit.
How it works at a high level
Your clinic claims a US phone number through Establishment → AI Frontdesk. Inbound calls hit our voice infrastructure, which streams audio to a tuned conversational model trained on healthcare front-desk patterns. The model is grounded in your clinic's schedule, providers, locations, FAQ knowledge base, and current capability toggles — never the open internet — so it can't hallucinate hours, prices, or providers you do not have.
Claim a number and configure capabilities
San Francisco · routes to AI receptionist Amber
Capabilities
Tap Get a Frontdesk line. Pick an area code and we provision a number in under a minute (E.911 registration takes longer — we walk you through that). Toggle the eight capabilities you want the AI to handle autonomously: book, reschedule, cancel, intake, refill, FAQ, take a message, triage. Anything you toggle off becomes "Let me transfer you to someone who can help with that" instead of an attempted resolution.
Pick the voice and persona
Amber
Amber
English · auto-detect
"Hi, this is Amber, the AI receptionist for Riverside Family Medicine. I can book a visit, take a refill, or grab someone for you - what can I help with today?"
Choose a voice (Amber, Noor, Kai, Lila), a persona name patients hear ("Hi, this is Amber from Riverside Family Medicine"), and a primary language. The AI auto-detects when a Spanish-speaking caller starts in Spanish and switches mid-call without you setting up a separate IVR tree. Every change to the persona shows the resulting greeting live so you hear what the patient will hear.
Call outcomes and the call log
Maria Lopez · (415) 555-0184
0:42 · Established patient · Booked follow-up Tue 2:30pm
Unknown caller · (510) 555-0118
1:08 · New patient · Started intake, paused for callback
James Patel · (415) 555-0231
0:24 · Asked about lab results - transferred to Dr. Yu
Every call ends with one of six outcomes: Booked, Rescheduled, Refill requested, Message taken, Transferred, or Hung up. The call log row shows the caller (matched to your patient list when the number is on file), the detected intent, the outcome, the duration, and a one-tap to read the full transcript or replay the audio. Outbound callbacks the AI initiated (e.g. "Following up on your refill") show up in the same log with an "outbound" badge.
Warm transfers and after-hours triage
Transferring to · Front desk · 3 staff online
Caller asked to speak to a person about an outstanding bill
When a caller asks for a human, says something the AI is not allowed to handle, or trips an urgent keyword (chest pain, suicidal thoughts, severe bleeding), the AI does a warm transfer: it briefs whoever picks up — "I have Maria Lopez on the line, established patient, wants to discuss her recent labs" — so the staff member is not starting cold. The transfer goes to whichever queue is currently online (front desk during hours, on-call provider after hours). If nobody is available the AI takes a message and pages your on-call line; for crisis-language calls it offers 988 inline before falling back to a human.
The knowledge base that grounds the AI
Establishment → AI Frontdesk → Knowledge. Add FAQ entries — hours, address, parking, accepted insurance, what to bring, telehealth instructions — and the AI reads the answer verbatim when asked. We seed the KB with the 30 most common front-desk questions when you claim a line; you edit the answers to match your practice. The KB never includes patient-specific data; that is fetched live from the chart at call time only when the caller has been authenticated.
What the AI will not do
The AI does not give clinical advice ("Should I take ibuprofen?" → transfer to a clinician). It will not quote a price for a service you have not configured. It will not book a controlled-substance refill or any visit type you have toggled off self-booking for. It will not impersonate a clinician — it always identifies as the AI receptionist on the first ring of every call.
Who can configure and review
AI Frontdesk is gated by managepracticesettings for configuration and manage_messaging for reviewing call transcripts. Practice managers and admins see both. Front-desk staff see only the live call queue and can pull a transcript when a patient asks about a specific call. All access is logged in the audit log.
Frequently asked questions
Are calls recorded? What about two-party-consent states?
How does the AI know if a slot is actually open?
What if the patient is not in our system?
Does it speak languages other than English and Spanish?
Can patients tell they are talking to an AI?
Keep reading
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How the AI scribe listens during in-person and telehealth visits, drafts a structured note, and waits for you to sign — never bypasses you.