Reception is with a patient, and the phone rings
Four-room physio clinic
Appointment requests captured during clinic hours and overnight alike.
The business
Four treatment rooms, one reception desk, and a front-of-house team of one and a half people. Bookings arrive by phone all day and, increasingly, at ten at night.
The challenge
- Reception is checking someone in when the phone goes, and the person standing at the desk is the one who wins.
- Evening callers wanting a next-day appointment reached an answering machine.
- Repeat questions — parking, what to wear, whether a referral is needed — took up most of the calls that did get answered.
What was set up
The common questions stopped reaching a human
Parking, opening hours, what to bring, whether a GP referral is needed — all answered from the clinic’s own pages, so reception only handles calls that need a person.
Booking straight into the diary
Connected to the clinic calendar, it books the right appointment length for the treatment being asked about, and texts a confirmation.
A written record of every call
Recording, transcript and a short summary for each one, so anything passed to a clinician arrives with what the patient actually said.
What changed
- The person at the desk is not choosing between the patient in front of them and the phone.
- Evening enquiries are booked overnight rather than queued for the morning.
- Reception’s day is the calls that genuinely needed reception.
This story describes a real operating situation and the setup that handles it. The business is described by trade and size rather than named, and nothing here is presented as a measured result. Named stories with figures are published once the customer has signed them off.