Dental Clinic Workflows to Automate, Ranked
These are the six patient conversations a dental clinic should automate first, ranked by how much front desk time or chair time each one recovers. The ranking assumes a clinic with one to four chairs, most messages on WhatsApp, and the appointment book kept in practice management software. Each one links to a recipe page with a description you can paste into AeroChat, what to connect and what you still decide.
For the message types, channels and plan sizing, see the dental clinics overview.
The ranking at a glance
| Rank | Workflow | What it recovers | Why it ranks here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Appointment booking | New patients who message after hours or while the desk is busy | It is where new revenue comes in, and the other workflows reuse its connection |
| 2 | Reschedule and cancel | Front desk time, and chair slots freed early enough to refill | One of the most frequent messages a clinic gets |
| 3 | Appointment reminder replies | Chair time lost to no-shows | Text reminders raised attendance from 67.8% to 78.6% in healthcare trials (Cochrane, 2013) |
| 4 | Treatment price questions | Enquiries that would leave after “please call us” | Patients compare clinics on price before they book |
| 5 | Insurance and health scheme questions | Front desk time on the first round of a coverage question | The general rule can be answered in chat, the specific case goes to your team |
| 6 | Symptom handover | Low volume, high stakes | Every setup needs it before going live |
Source: Gurol-Urganci et al., Cochrane, 2013, 8 randomised trials, healthcare appointments.
The six workflows
1. Book an appointment with the right dentist and slot length
A patient messages at 9.30pm: “any slot sat morning for scaling? I saw Dr Lee last time”. AeroChat works out the treatment and slot length, checks Dr Lee’s free slots in your practice management system, offers three times and books the one the patient picks. New patients get the longer first-visit slot and your registration link. This ranks first because it is where new patients come in, and evening requests are the easiest to lose.
2. Reschedule or cancel by reply
“Can’t make Thursday 3pm, can I change it?” arrives every day. AeroChat checks the patient is messaging from the number on the booking, finds the appointment, offers new times with the same dentist and moves it. A cancellation frees the slot in the diary straight away, so your team can offer it to someone else.
3. Handle replies to appointment reminders
Your practice management system or a WhatsApp broadcast sends the reminder the day before. The replies are what take time: “ok”, “can we move it to next week?”, “what time again?”. AeroChat answers each one, moves the appointment when asked, and marks confirmed patients in your practice system.
Appointment reminder replies recipe
4. Answer treatment prices as ranges
“How much for scaling and polishing” and “how much for braces” come before most bookings. AeroChat answers from your price list. Fixed fees are quoted outright. Variable treatments get a range and what it depends on, and the patient is told the dentist confirms the price at the visit.
Treatment price questions recipe
5. Answer insurance and government health scheme questions
“Can I use my insurance?” and “can I claim this under the government scheme?” have a general answer and a specific one. AeroChat gives your general rule from your coverage notes, collects the insurer, scheme or panel name and the treatment, and passes the specific case to the front desk to check.
Insurance and health scheme questions recipe
6. Hand symptom messages to a person
Pain, swelling, bleeding after an extraction, a broken tooth or a lost crown all need a dentist’s judgment. AeroChat never gives clinical advice. It hands the conversation to your team at once, tells the patient a person is coming, and sends your after-hours instruction when the clinic is closed. It ranks last because the volume is low. Set it up before any other workflow goes live.
What they connect to
- Your practice management system, for each dentist’s free slots and the appointments themselves, used by workflows 1, 2 and 3. Open Dental and Cliniko connect through their APIs: create or request an API key in the system’s settings and paste it in when AeroChat asks. A small clinic that runs its diary in Google Calendar can connect its Google account instead.
- Airwallex, built in, for deposit links on long or first-time appointments. HitPay and Stripe connect through their APIs if you already use them.
- Your knowledge base for the price list, slot lengths, coverage notes, address and after-hours instruction.
- AeroChat’s own handover, tags and team notifications for workflows 5 and 6 and every exception.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
What stays with your team
- Anything clinical: pain, swelling, bleeding, a reaction to treatment, and any question about whether a treatment is suitable.
- Confirming whether a specific patient’s treatment is covered by their insurance, a government health scheme or an employer panel.
- Final prices for treatments that need an examination first.
- Complaints about a dentist or a treatment.
- Refunds, and exceptions to your cancellation or deposit policy.
Each recipe hands these over with the details collected, so your team picks up the conversation without asking the patient to repeat themselves.
How they fit together
Booking is the base. Rescheduling and reminder replies change a booking, so they reuse its connection to your practice management system. Price and coverage questions often end in a booking request, which passes straight into the booking workflow. The symptom handover runs alongside all of them. When a patient mentions pain in the middle of a booking, the booking pauses and a person takes over.
You can paste the recipes one at a time. When you paste the second, AeroChat sees what you already have and adds to it rather than building a duplicate.
Build your first one
Start with booking and the symptom handover together. Paste both, connect your practice management system, and send a test message from your own phone asking for a scaling slot on Saturday.
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