Every clinic owner eventually does the same sum on a scrap of paper. The phone rings out while I treat. What would it cost to have someone answer it? There are three real options. One of them is ours, and we will say so plainly when we get there. All three deserve a fair hearing, because the right answer genuinely depends on the size and shape of your clinic.

First, size the problem

Keep a fortnight's tally of calls that ring out during treatment hours. Everything below assumes you know that number. A clinic missing two calls a week and a clinic missing twenty need different answers. Anyone who prescribes before counting is selling, not advising.

Option one: a receptionist

What it is. A person at the desk: answering, booking, greeting, chasing, handling the hundred small things a clinic runs on.

The cost shape. A wage, paid whether the phone rings or not. Say you pay for twenty hours a week; the cost is fixed, the call volume is not.

Where it genuinely wins. A multi-practitioner clinic, where the desk is busy all day. A good receptionist there is not a cost, she is the reason the diary stays full and patients feel looked after. Nothing electronic replaces the person who knows Mrs Patel likes the early slot.

Where it falls down. The solo clinic. The call volume rarely fills the hours you would have to pay for. The phone still rings before nine and after five, when nobody is at the desk. Holidays and sick days reopen the gap exactly as before.

Option two: a medical answering service

What it is. A call centre answers in your clinic's name and takes a message: name, number, what it is about. The message reaches you by text or email.

The cost shape. Typically a monthly fee plus a per-call or per-minute charge. Ask what happens to the bill in your busiest week, and whether unused calls roll over.

Where it genuinely wins. A human voice instead of voicemail, and callers leave real details with a person far more often than with a beep. For overflow and out-of-hours message-taking, it does what it says.

Where it falls down. A message is not a booking. The service cannot see your diary. The patient who wanted Thursday at two is told "someone will call you back". The ringing back lands on you between patients, which is the exact problem you were paying to solve. The decisive minutes, when she is ringing three clinics from three tabs, are already over.

Option three: an AI receptionist on your real diary

What it is. Software that answers in seconds, any hour, and sounds like a good front desk. It books real appointments: it reads your availability, offers real slots for the right appointment type, creates the booking in your practice system, and sends the patient a confirmation. Anything clinical is never answered; it is passed straight to you.

Declared plainly: this is what we build and sell. We build on Cliniko's API itself, not a widget bolted on top. We did it for a real clinic whose booking flow has been live since July 2026. Weigh everything in this section knowing whose article you are reading.

The cost shape. More than free, less than a wage: a setup, then a monthly fee. Judge any quote, ours included, against your tally sum, not against zero.

Where it genuinely wins. The solo and small clinic. It answers during every treatment, at 8pm, and on the receptionist's day off. It is the only option of the three where the 10:20 call ends in a booked slot without anyone leaving the treatment room.

Where it falls down. At two missed calls a week it will not earn its keep, and we would tell you so. Setup is real work. Appointment types, availability rules, and what gets escalated all have to be set with you, and a rushed setup shows. Some patients will always want a human, so clean handover matters and must be tested.

The honest recommendation

Do the free things first regardless: your booking link on your Google profile today, a missed-call auto-text, the fortnight tally. Multi-practitioner with a busy desk? Hire the receptionist; option three can cover her evenings and holidays later. Solo, with a tally that stings? Option three is the only one that matches a clinic-hours problem with round-the-clock cover without adding a wage. And if the tally comes back small, do nothing more and keep your money; that is a happy ending too.

Bring the fortnight's tally and your appointment fee. Twenty minutes, and you will leave with the front desk costed in your own numbers. You will also get a straight answer on which of the three fits, even where that answer is not us.