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A clinic phone rings all day and the front desk is with a patient. Most of those calls are one of two things: someone booking, or someone changing a booking. This builds an agent that handles the booking case properly, including the part most setups get wrong, which is what happens when the caller does not want any of the times on offer.

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Before you start

1

A connected calendar with the right event type

Event types come from your calendar, not from Fluents, so create the appointment type there first. A 30 minute “New patient consultation” is enough to start.
2

A phone number

See Numbers.
3

A decision about HIPAA

If this clinic handles protected health information, turn on Enable HIPAA Compliance for the environment before you take real calls, not after. It restricts some features, so you want to know which ones early. See Settings.

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1. Create the agent

Go to Agents, create one, and name it after the clinic rather than the task. Callers sometimes ask who they are speaking to. On Basic Information, choose a Voice and Language. For a clinic, slower is better than faster. Leave Speed at 1.00x until you have heard it read a date and a time out loud.

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2. Write the opening line

Initial Message is what the agent says the moment it answers.
Good morning, you have reached Harbor Dental. How can I help?
Resist the urge to list options. This is a phone call, not a menu, and the caller already knows why they rang. Voicemail Message does not apply to an inbound agent, so leave it empty.

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3. Add Appointment Scheduling

Under Choose Skills, add Appointment Scheduling.
The Configure Appointment Scheduling dialog with Calendar Provider, Time zone, Event Type and Collect user's email
Choosing a provider prompts you to connect it over OAuth, so have the clinic’s calendar account to hand before you start. See Appointment Scheduling for the full behaviour.
Confirm the Time zone by booking a test appointment and looking at it in the calendar. A timezone that is one hour out books every patient at the wrong time and looks like a working agent while it does it.

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4. Add Call Back Later

This is the step people skip, and it is the difference between an agent that books appointments and an agent that loses patients. Add Call Back Later under Choose Skills. Both fields are required.
The Configure Call Back Later dialog with Callback Confirmation and Callback Initial Message, both required
Write the callback opener assuming the patient has forgotten agreeing to it, because they usually have.
Hi, this is Harbor Dental calling back about booking your appointment. Is now a good time?
The agent negotiates the time itself, including vague answers like “tomorrow afternoon”. See Call Back Later.

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5. Write the prompt

Paste this into Agent Prompt and change the clinic details. You can also use Generate Prompt or start from the library. See Prompts.
The two rules that matter most here are “offer at most two times at once” and “spell the email back”. Both fix problems you will otherwise find in the transcripts.

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6. Point your number at it

On the agent page, use the Inbound: Assign numbers badge and assign the clinic number.

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7. Call it yourself

Click Test Agent, then Start Phone Call and enter your own number so the agent rings you. Book a real appointment and then look at it in the calendar. Try these three, in this order:
  1. The easy one. Book the first time offered. Check the calendar entry and the email.
  2. The awkward one. Refuse both times and see whether it moves to a callback rather than reading out more slots.
  3. The one you do not want. Describe a symptom and check it declines to advise.
Do not skip the third. It is the only one with real consequences, and it is the one a prompt change is most likely to break later.

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8. After a week

Add insights on the Post-Call tab so you can measure this rather than guess. Useful ones for a clinic:
  • Was an appointment booked
  • Was a callback agreed
  • Did the caller ask about price or insurance
Then chart them over a date range in Reports. The number worth watching is not how many calls the agent answered, it is how many ended with either a booking or an agreed callback.
When a call goes badly, open it in Calls and use Create test from call before you change the prompt. See Testing an agent.

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Where to go next