Chris (00:03.31)
What’s up everyone. Welcome back to the No BS Dental Growth Podcast. If you’re a dentist trying to figure out how to use AI without turning your practice into a robot factory, this episode is for you. Today we’re talking about the real state of AI and dental marketing, where it’s powerful, where it’s risky, and where a lot of practices are quietly damaging the patient experience without realizing it. AI is everywhere right now.
Everybody’s talking about voice agents, automation, chat bots, and complete handoff systems. And yes, without question, AI can be incredible. But if it’s overused, poorly implemented, implemented AI just doesn’t hurt conversion. can erode trust. So in this episode, I’ve talked about this before, but I’m gonna break down where AI actually works in the practice.
where it absolutely does not based off of our experience and how to use it as a support system instead of a replacement for the human touch your patients still expect. Now, if you’ve heard me speak about this before, you know that I said that AI has its place, like I’m saying today, but the problem is, is that I think that it’s not really a problem, but I think that in healthcare,
Using AI is going to be a little bit slower to adopt. And the reason for that is more of a, you know, if you’re ordering pizza, let’s say, honestly, I don’t care if it’s an AI bot or if it’s a human being could care less. But if I am talking to somebody about my healthcare or my family’s healthcare, or I’m trying to make a decision, if you know, this practice is a right fit for me and my family.
I’m going to be a little put off by AI if it’s a voice agent or just interacting with it in general, because AI is getting better every day, but you can still tell. And it’s still not to the point to where you can’t tell if it’s Sally at your front desk or if it’s an AI bot. It’s getting, it’s getting pretty good, but it’s just not there yet. So that’s really what I want to talk about today is where is its place after we’ve been doing this now, we’ve implemented AI voice agents and things to our clients now for over a year.
Chris (02:26.446)
Obviously they’ve been around before that, but so that’s what I want to spend this episode on is really digging into what’s working. We’re seeing with our clients and what’s not that we’ve learned from our clients and things like that. So let’s get into it and we’ll see how this goes. So in my opinion here, AI really isn’t the problem here. It’s, know, overusing it or trying to just use it to replace everything and save a ton of money or, you know, save all of your efficiency and
You know, AI should still support the human experience, not replace it. And if you get that balance wrong, you really don’t just lose efficiency. You’re going to lose the trust. And that’s hard to win back with a with a patient. So AI is absolutely everywhere. You’re hearing about it when you go to conferences. People are calling you about it. Sign up for this chat bot, this voice agent, AI generated content, AI follow up, AI scheduling, AI reviews.
really AI everything and on the surface, it all sounds pretty amazing. It really does. I even fall for it a lot of times, but most practices are asking the wrong question. They’re asking where can we use AI when they really should be asking where should we use AI? That’s kind of the big difference. I think, and this distinction does matter. See AI works best when it handles volume, speed, consistency and and rep repetition.
all the things humans are bad at doing over and over again, typically, or they just get busy, you know, and AI works worst when it replaces empathy, handle sensitive conversations, and really just kind of becomes the only voice of the practice. I know most of you would think I would never do that, but there are that do. Patients don’t want to feel automated, whether it’s AI or, you know, a chat message or whatever it might be. They want to feel taken care of.
Right. So that’s really the line most practices cross without realizing it. You see some people and, you know, businesses in general, myself included sometimes, will look at a spreadsheet and will say, well, look, this makes sense if we don’t do this anymore. Just looking at the dollar value and what it costs and things like that without really taking into consideration what that really means. Right. So if we remove this, what other parts of the business would that affect if it’s no longer there? Right.
Chris (04:53.016)
So in thinking about that, now let’s kind of shift to where AI actually works really well in dental marketing. And this isn’t just from my opinions. This is from us implementing this stuff, hearing about implementation from other companies and other clients as well. So first, let’s talk about missed calls. This is the easiest win, I think, in dentistry. Missed calls happen during lunch, during busy times, after hours, and when the front desk is just completely overwhelmed, which can happen.
So using an AI voice agent here for missed calls, missed calls only is a great use of AI. Why would that be Chris? Well, because the patient already didn’t reach a human. So they’re not gonna get a human no matter what. So what are we gonna do then? We’re gonna send them to a cold voicemail. Okay, maybe, or we’ve hired this great fancy answering service for our practice. Let me tell you folks in doing this, I’m in this industry now for on our 17th year.
I have really yet to come across too many answering services that really are impressing me. Most of them it’s, I would rather them just not even talk to my patients. So what really matters here though is speed. Speed matters more than the warmth in that moment because if this is a potential new patient, they’re looking at a list on Google and they’re comparing and contrasting. And if they don’t get somebody to answer the phone,
guess what? They’re probably not going to stick around and leave a message. They’re probably just going to go on to the next dentist. So and really the goal here is simple. Capture the intent, respond quickly, and make sure someone follows up. And that’s what AI is doing. It can do that. So we can connect them to Taylor, for instance, who’s our voice AI agent. Instead of going to voicemail, they go to Taylor. But we program Taylor specifically on our client’s practice.
They know hours, insurances, they know where they’re located. If it’s next to a grocery store, so if the person asked driving directions, we can talk to them about our services, our procedures. We don’t get into health related questions, but there are even instances that we can have Taylor schedule an appointment online through this voice AI agent so it can do a lot. And she sounds great. You can tell it’s not AI and we don’t try to hide the fact that she’s AI, but.
Chris (07:17.386)
She does a great job and we have great data supporting that. And it’s just way better than sending them to a cold voicemail or that dreaded answering service that I’ve talked about. So next let’s talk about lead follow up. AI follow up works well when someone didn’t schedule on the first call. Maybe they submitted a form or they came in from a Google or Facebook lead, something like that. AI can respond to those people pretty quickly.
They can stay consistent and nurture really without any pressure. But here’s the key, AI should handle handoff to humans. It should not really trap patients inside this endless automation. Next, call analysis and quality control. AI listening to calls is a huge win. Now do this HIPAA compliant, of course, but AI does not get tired. It doesn’t miss patterns. It doesn’t sugarcoat feedback.
This helps practices improve front desk performance. It helps them identify missed opportunities and stop blaming marketing, ta-da, for conversion problems, because we do see that. So there’s very little downside here when it’s done right. Like for instance, our systems with AI for call analysis is we’ll listen to every call, AI will, we’ll identify who answers the call. So if you have more than one person answering front desk calls.
And we’ll tell on each call, we’ll tell you what went well on the call and what didn’t do so well on the call based on our training program. So you can see patterns if Randy keeps answering the phone and putting people on hold too long or whatever it might be. If there’s a consistency there, we need to sit down and have a training with Randy about that. Right. And you as a business owner, this falls on your plate. Yeah, you can have a manager do it or you can have them try to self-police themselves. But look, if we’re to spend all this money in marketing,
and we’re going to get people to call you, we’ve got to make sure your front desk is absolutely as good as it can be. And that’s where AI can really help out here. Now, what I do want to talk about also is where AI starts to break trust. First, replacing live calls entirely. Don’t do this, please. Using AI to answer every inbound call all day long is not efficiency, it’s avoidance. And it can be cheapness.
Chris (09:41.272)
Patients call dental offices because they’re nervous, they’re in pain, they’re unsure, or they need reassurance. AI cannot read this hesitation. It can’t hear fear the way a trained human can. AI should be a backup, not a barricade. Secondly here, over-automated messaging, easy for me to say. If every text, email, and follow-up feels robotic,
patience notice and by the way, this is why I just can’t stand these out of the box solutions. So like if you’re using Dentrix or weave or whatever you’re using to do follow ups and appointment reminders and you’re using that out of the box, it’s already there. Like they give you a recommended message and all you’re really doing is changing the name. Don’t do that. Make it personable. Rewrite it. Have us write it, whatever it might be, but do something different. Break out of this mold. You know, be unique.
I think is really the way I would go here. again, I kind of get on my rant there, but if every text, email, and follow-up feels robotic, patients do notice this, they may not say it, and rarely will they, but they do feel it and they remember that. And when patients feel processed, if you will, guess, instead of cared for, they’re gonzo. So AI should really enhance personalization, not erase it.
Now third, AI content without human oversight. AI written blogs, emails, and ads are fine, they really are. But AI written everything with no human editing is how practices end up sounding generic and disconnected, and AI makes mistakes every day. We see it here at Kickstart Dental Marketing. So you’ve gotta really stay on top of this. Your brand really still needs a human voice. That’s not gonna go away.
And here’s the philosophy I can recommend for this, for dental practices. AI should really catch what humans miss, cover gaps, handle overflow, and improve consistency. If you have a process that you have the process, but maybe somebody just doesn’t have the time to do it consistently, this AI can be great for that. Humans should handle conversations, emotion, objections, and trust building.
Chris (11:59.372)
That’s not going to go away for a very long time, if ever, in my opinion, in healthcare. Now, if AI touches every patient interaction, you’ve gone too far. If AI supports your team, instead of replacing them, you’re doing it right. Now, here’s why this matters for marketing ROI. When AI is used the wrong way, conversion will drop, reviews will suffer, trust erodes, and marketing starts to look like it stopped working.
but marketing didn’t stop working. The experience has been broken. And marketing always gets blamed for experience problems. That’s why AI strategy has to be intentional. So here’s what I recommend Dennis go do right now. Audit where AI is touching patients today. Identify where humans should stay involved. This is in your own practice. Use AI for missed calls, not all calls. Use AI for follow-up, not avoidance.
and train your team alongside your technology. Keep them updated with what’s going on and what the big picture is. AI should make your team better, not invisible. Now, here’s my final thought. AI and dental marketing is powerful, but the goal isn’t automation. The goal is better care delivered more consistently. The practices that win won’t be the most automated. They’ll be the most intentional.
All right, that’s it for today’s episode of the No BS Dental Growth podcast. If this episode made you rethink how you’re using or planning to use AI in your practice, do me a favor and share it with another dentist who’s probably heading down the automation rabbit hole, maybe a little too fast. And if you’re getting value from this podcast, make sure you subscribe, leave a quick review and download the episodes that you find helpful. That stuff actually helps more dentists find the show.
And if you want help implementing AI the right way, where it supports your team, protects the patient experience and actually improves ROI, that’s exactly what we help practices do every single day. So until next time, keep growing smart, stay human, and I’ll see you on the next episode.
