Guides
Guides for dental practices
Every guide on this site, each with the question it answers and the one-line answer. Written for practice owners and managers, vendor-neutral where the subject is a category, and reviewed on the date shown. Where a figure appears it is either yours to set or labelled illustrative.
Missed calls and the phone
- How do dental practices recover missed calls?
Log every unanswered call as an enquiry, text the caller back within seconds, and order the callback queue by treatment value and time waiting.
Guide · reviewed 19 October 2026
- Which dental phone systems help UK practices recover missed calls?
Four approaches exist: voicemail, call-back queues, missed-call text-back and PMS-linked logging. Only text-back reaches the caller before they ring the next practice.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
Enquiries, response time and follow-up
- How should a dental practice manage patient enquiries?
Capture every channel into one pipeline, reply in seconds, give each enquiry an owner and measure conversion to booking.
Guide · reviewed 19 October 2026
- How quickly should a dental practice reply to an enquiry?
Acknowledge within seconds on every channel, reach a substantive reply within minutes in opening hours, and hold a written target by enquiry type and channel.
Guide · reviewed 19 October 2026
- How should a dental practice handle after-hours enquiries?
Acknowledge and answer the predictable questions in seconds, queue anything needing a person for the morning, and never leave an evening enquiry silent until nine.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- How do dental practices manage WhatsApp enquiries?
Take WhatsApp off the handset and into the same inbox as SMS, email and web chat, so every enquiry gets the same reply speed and follow-up.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- How should a dental practice follow up an enquiry that went quiet?
Follow up on a schedule, stop the moment the patient replies or books, and treat unaccepted treatment plans as open enquiries with an owner.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
Software and systems
- What is dental lead management software?
Software that tracks prospective patients from first enquiry to booked treatment, sitting before the practice management system.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- How do you compare automated lead follow-up tools for dental practices in the UK?
Score each tool on channels captured, PMS write-back, follow-up cadence, reporting, pricing model and UK data residency, and only then look at price.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- Lead tracker, CRM or revenue infrastructure: which does a dental practice need?
A lead tracker records enquiries, a CRM manages relationships, and revenue infrastructure replies, follows up and measures conversion in the same pipeline.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- What is an enquiry management system for a UK appointment-led practice?
A system that captures every enquiry from every channel, replies fast, gives each one an owner and reports what converted, for any practice that books appointments.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- When does an AI receptionist fit a dental practice?
When messages and calls go unanswered at busy or closed times. Not when the problem is clinical judgement, diary management or an unhappy patient.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
- Does ReplyOS work with our practice management system?
ReplyOS sits at the enquiry layer before the PMS, so it runs alongside Dentally, SOE Exact, Carestream R4 and Aerona today without an integration.
Guide · reviewed 22 September 2026
Measuring the leak
- What is revenue leakage in a dental practice?
Treatment value lost between a patient's first enquiry and a booked appointment: calls that ring out, slow replies, quiet threads and unchased treatment plans.
Guide · reviewed 28 September 2026
- How much are missed dental enquiries costing you?
Four numbers you set: enquiries per day, share missed, share that would have booked, treatment value. All labelled illustrative.
Calculator · reviewed 19 October 2026
Read the guide, run the numbers, then talk to us.
In that order. The calculator turns what you have read into a figure for your own practice; the call is for when that figure is worth acting on.