BBL / FOR PODIATRY CLINICS

The phone rings while you’re treating.
That patient books the next clinic.

Solo and small podiatry clinics lose patients in three places: the call that rings out mid-appointment, the lapsed patient nobody recalls, and “online booking” that isn’t really your diary. We build on Cliniko itself, not a plug-in bolted on top.

Podiatry clinics lose patients in three places: calls that ring out during treatment, lapsed patients nobody recalls, and booking buttons that open a separate tab instead of the real diary. An AI receptionist built on the Cliniko API answers calls, checks genuine availability and creates the appointment directly in the clinic diary.

Live Cliniko booking, built on the API·Page one for “podiatrist shepperton”·8 patients booked, no ads

HEAR IT FIRST

Let it ring you, and judge it yourself.

This is the receptionist that answers when you are with a patient. Put your number in and it calls you in about a minute, so you can hear how it handles a new patient before you decide anything.

  • Tell it your most booked appointment and what it is worth
  • See what the calls you miss are costing you a year
  • Answer the phone and interrogate it like a patient would
Your most booked appointment

At those numbers, the calls you miss are worth£49,920 a yearAssumes you would win one in five of them, and counts one appointment each. Patients who come back are worth more.

Tick the box above and this button turns on.

One call, to the number you typed, usually within a minute. No cost, and we do not pass your number on.

Rather talk to a person first?

THE THREE LEAKS
01

Leak 1: calls during clinic hours.

You can’t answer with a patient in the chair, and reception cover for a solo clinic rarely matches the call volume. So new patients ring out, and a new patient who rings out books the next clinic on Google. The appointment you were in paid once; the call you missed might have been years of six-weekly care.

02

Leak 2: patients who quietly lapse.

Routine care runs on rhythm: six-weekly nails, annual diabetic checks, biomechanics reviews. Life gets in the way, nobody recalls them, and a regular becomes a stranger. Your patient list is the clinic’s biggest asset, and mostly nobody is running it.

03

Leak 3: booking that isn’t your diary.

A “book now” button that opens a contact form, or a widget that doesn’t know your real availability, makes work instead of removing it. Booking only counts when it reads your actual Cliniko diary: real appointment types, real slots, confirmed instantly, no re-keying.

SIZE THE LEAK

What one missed new patient costs. In your numbers.

Placeholder figures, deliberately. Swap in your own clinic’s; the sum is the point.

Say one new-patient call a week rings out mid-treatment1
Say your appointment fee is£45
Say a routine patient visits this many times a year8
That’s £360 a year per patient. A year of missed calls at one a week is roughly £18,000 of recurring care, walking to the next clinic.

Not our numbers and not a promise: tally your own rang-out calls for a fortnight and re-run the sum. Then count patients not seen in nine months. For a sense of the scale, a clinic we built charges from £55 for an assessment and from £350 for nail surgery per toe, which is roughly the going rate: £300 to £500 a toe at a clinic, over £1,000 at a private hospital. The point is not our client’s price list, it is that almost none of your money sits in the first appointment. It is in the second, third and fourth.

THREE WAYS TO FIX IT

Three ways to fix it. Two of them aren’t us.

01

Reception hours, or ring back between patients

Hire part-time cover or return calls at lunch. Honest verdict: a good receptionist earns their keep once you’re multi-practitioner. Falls down for solo clinics because the cost rarely matches the call volume, and ringing back at 1pm loses the 10am caller who already booked elsewhere.

02

Cliniko’s own online booking, used properly

Cliniko’s booking page is genuinely good and included in what you already pay. Put the link on your Google profile today. Honest verdict: do this regardless of us. Falls down only because most first-time patients still phone, and a booking page can’t recall a lapsed patient or answer “do you treat verrucas?”.

03

A receptionist built on your Cliniko

An AI receptionist that answers every call, checks your real Cliniko availability, books the actual appointment type into the actual diary, and runs recalls for lapsed patients. Not a widget on top: we build against the Cliniko API itself, as we did for a live clinic. This one is ours.

Our recommendation: Do option two today either way: it’s free and it works. If the phone still rings out through treatment hours after that, option three is the only route that answers the call and books the real diary without hiring reception. Bring a fortnight’s missed-call tally and we’ll size it against your appointment book honestly.

PHONE CALL TO BOOKED APPOINTMENT

No reception needed. Here is the whole chain.

Five steps from a ringing phone to a patient with a confirmed appointment. Two of them are ours. One of them is Cliniko’s own feature, and we will tell you which, because you already pay for it.

  1. The call comes in.

    You are in the chair with a patient. It answers in seconds, in your clinic’s voice, instead of ringing out to voicemail.

    You can hear this yourself. Fill in the form at the top of this page and it rings your mobile in about a minute.

  2. It works out what they need.

    An ingrown toenail and a biomechanics assessment are different appointments of different lengths. It asks enough to get that right. Anything clinical goes to you, always: it books feet in, it does not give advice about them.

  3. It reads your live Cliniko diary.

    Not a copy, not an overnight sync that drifts out of date. Real availability, real appointment types, real practitioner hours, exactly as Cliniko holds them.

  4. It creates the appointment.

    In Cliniko itself, while the patient is still on the phone. Not a message for you to action later, not a form in your inbox. The slot is filled before you have finished with the patient in front of you.

    Built and live for Thameside Podiatry in Shepperton, on the Cliniko API.

  5. Cliniko confirms and reminds them.

    The confirmation and the reminder text go out on their own, so the patient turns up and you never touch it.

    That step is Cliniko’s own feature, free on every plan. If you have not switched on appointment reminders and follow-up messages, go into your settings and switch them on today. You do not need us for that part and we will not charge you for it.

Where Cliniko stops, and why that is the only gap we sell

Cliniko sends messages, and it sends them well. What it cannot do is have a conversation. Its messages are one-way, so a patient replying “yes, Tuesday please” goes nowhere and nobody is listening. It can nudge someone to rebook but it cannot offer them two times and then make the booking. And it cannot answer a phone. That gap, between a message sent and an appointment booked, is the whole of what we build.

WHAT WE BUILD FOR CLINICS

Three systems. Most clinics need one.

Each one below says who it is wrong for as well as who it is right for. If the honest answer after we have looked at your numbers is that you need none of them, we will say so on the call.

01

The phone, answered

Every call picked up and booked into your real Cliniko diary.

THE PROBLEM IT SOLVES

You are hands-on with a patient for most of the working day, so the phone rings when you physically cannot reach it. A new patient who gets voicemail rings the next clinic on Google, and you never find out it happened.

WHAT'S IN IT

  • Answers 24/7, including evenings and weekends, in your clinic’s voice
  • Works out the right appointment type and length before it books
  • Reads live Cliniko availability, not a copy that drifts
  • Creates the appointment in Cliniko while the patient is still on the phone
  • Anything clinical is escalated to you and never answered by the machine
  • Call recordings and a plain-English monthly report
OPTION AStarter

One agent on your clinic line, answering and booking.

OPTION BPremium

Adds multi-practitioner routing, a custom voice, and a monthly performance review.

Skip this if: you already have full-time reception cover that answers reliably through treatment hours. A good receptionist beats this, and once you are multi-practitioner they usually earn their keep. This is for the clinics who cannot justify that salary yet.

02

The patients who quietly stopped coming

Your existing list, worked properly, instead of sitting there.

THE PROBLEM IT SOLVES

Routine care runs on rhythm: six-weekly nails, annual diabetic checks, the orthotic fitting after the assessment. When someone drops out of that rhythm nothing tells you. The diary still looks full because another patient took the slot, so a regular becomes a stranger and no red light ever comes on.

WHAT'S IN IT

  • Finds who has lapsed, who never booked the follow-up, and who is due back
  • Contacts them, offers two real times, and books whichever they pick
  • Handles the reply, which is the part Cliniko’s one-way messages cannot do
  • Works the enquiries who rang or filled in a form and never became patients
  • A monthly number showing what came back and what it was worth
OPTION AStarter

One list, one campaign, run and reported.

OPTION BPremium

Segmented by care type, running continuously, with ongoing list hygiene.

Skip this if: you are newly opened and your patient list is small. There is nothing to reactivate yet, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. Come back to this when you have a couple of years of patients behind you.

03

The site that fills the diary

Found on Google, and booking into Cliniko without leaving your website.

THE PROBLEM IT SOLVES

Most clinic sites hand the patient off at the moment of booking: you click “book online” and land on a cliniko.com page with different branding and different fonts. You spent money building trust and then posted the patient somewhere that looks like admin software.

WHAT'S IN IT

  • Built to be found for the searches patients actually make in your town
  • Booking on your own site, in your own brand, start to finish
  • Real Cliniko appointment types and live availability through the API
  • Your opening hours and closures controlled from Cliniko, not by emailing us
  • GA4 and a monthly report in plain English: searched, visited, enquired, booked
OPTION AStarter

The pages that do the work, with booking wired in and measured.

OPTION BPremium

Adds the full funnel view, conversion work, and a quarterly review.

Skip this if: your site already ranks for your town and books into Cliniko properly. Fix the phone first: an unanswered call costs you a patient today, whereas a tired website costs you slowly.

No prices here on purpose. We size your problem in your numbers first, then you get a one-time setup fee, a monthly fee for optimisation and support, and options to choose between. Never a take-it-or-leave-it, and never a figure before we understand what is actually leaking.

BUILT FOR A REAL CLINIC

Empty diary to 8 patients. Page one. No ads.

Thameside Podiatry · Shepperton, Surrey

8 patients
booked since launch, from an empty diary
8 days
from launch to first patient
Page 1
for “podiatrist shepperton”, latest 28 days
No ads
organic search and the site

Patients: Cliniko, 15 September 2026: 8 unique people with a booked appointment. Search Console 10 August to 6 September: “podiatrist shepperton” at average position 3.7. No Paid Search or Paid Social in the measured GA windows.

THE PROBLEM

Aaron opened a new clinic in Shepperton. New room, new equipment, no patients and no website. Invisible on Google, an empty diary, and rent going out every month.

WHAT WE BUILT

  • A five-page clinic site, live within days
  • Booking wired into Cliniko through the API: appointments land in the diary, not an inbox
  • Weekend opening hours front and centre, which most local competitors cannot match
  • A Google Business Profile covering 20 service areas across the catchment
  • A voice agent that answers the phone and books into the same Cliniko diary

WHAT HAPPENED

The site went live on 7 July. Eight days later a complete stranger found it, got in touch through the site, came in, and became patient number one. By 15 September Cliniko shows 8 unique patients with a booked appointment, including a nail surgery. “podiatrist shepperton” sits on page one. No ads.

THE HONEST BIT

Eight booked patients, not the 14 contacts sitting in Cliniko. Position 3.7 is on 16 impressions, so treat it as a ranking, not a traffic flood. Cliniko records 0 online bookings. The first patients came through the site and the phone. No Paid Search or Paid Social in the measured windows.

Read the full case study →See it live →

HOW IT WORKS

We start with your diary, not our tech: which appointment types fill, which gap, what a missed appointment costs you, how many calls ring out. Then we build on Cliniko itself: your appointment types, your availability rules, bookings created where your notes already live. Pricing follows the problem: a one-time setup fee plus a monthly fee for optimisation and support, with options to choose between, never a take-it-or-leave-it.

PROOF

We built Thameside Podiatry’s site and its Cliniko booking flow: real appointment types, live availability, bookings created straight in the clinic diary. Live since July 2026, with the clinic’s first genuine patient enquiry arriving eight days after launch.

THE CLINIC LIBRARY

Everything we have worked out about clinic enquiries.

Free to read, no email required. Most of it you can act on without us.

WHAT A MISSED PATIENT COSTS

GETTING CLINIKO RIGHT

IF YOU ARE PAYING FOR ADS

MORE ON THIS

DO THIS TODAY

Worth doing whether you call us or not.

  1. Put your Cliniko online booking link on your Google Business Profile and Instagram bio today. Free, ten minutes, and it catches the patients who’d rather not phone.
  2. Export patients not seen in nine months and text the twenty most recent: “We’ve a few appointments this week if your feet are due a check.” Recalls like this fill quiet days on their own.
  3. Keep a fortnight’s tally of calls that ring out during treatment. Multiply by your fee and visit rhythm as above. That’s the number to bring to any conversation, with us or anyone else.
COMMON QUESTIONS

How do podiatry clinics stop losing patients to missed calls?

What does a missed call cost a podiatry clinic?

Price the patient, not the call. A £55 initial assessment that leads to three follow-ups is around £200 of lifetime value. Miss five calls a week at a one-in-two booking rate and that is roughly £26,000 a year of appointments going to whichever clinic answered.

Can an AI receptionist book directly into Cliniko?

Yes, when it is built on the Cliniko API rather than bolted on. It reads your appointment types, durations and practitioner hours, offers only slots Cliniko says are genuinely free, and the booking appears in your diary the moment it is made.

Will it answer clinical questions from patients?

No, by design. Anything clinical (whether a treatment is suitable, what a symptom means) goes to you. It handles times, appointment types, location, parking and prices you have given it, then books or takes a message.

Is a Cliniko iframe good enough for online booking?

It works, but it costs you patients. An iframe or new-tab booking button throws the visitor onto a different address bar and a different design mid-decision, and every hop loses people you paid to attract. Booking on the page they landed on converts better.

Does this work for physio, chiro and other Cliniko clinics?

Yes. The build came out of a podiatry clinic, but nothing in it is podiatry-specific: physio, chiro, osteo and aesthetics clinics run the same Cliniko objects. The appointment types and questions change; the plumbing does not.

Is patient data safe?

Bookings are created directly in your Cliniko account, so records stay where they already live and no second copy of your patient database gets built elsewhere. The API key is held server-side and never exposed to a browser, which is the most common mistake in clinic sites built by other people.

THE DOUBTS

Asked before booking. Answered straight.

Patients won’t book with an AI.

The comparison isn’t AI versus you answering: it’s AI versus ringing out. The receptionist answers like a good front desk, books the real diary, and nothing clinical is ever answered by it; questions about treatment go straight to you. Patients get a booked slot instead of a dead line.

Will it mess up my Cliniko diary?

It can only book what Cliniko says is genuinely free, because it reads your availability the way Cliniko does: appointment types, durations, practitioner hours. That’s the point of building on the API instead of bolting a widget on top. Every booking appears in Cliniko the moment it’s made.

I’m a solo clinic. This feels like big-practice kit.

It’s priced from your problem, not a rate card, and sometimes the honest answer after the maths is “not yet, do the free things first”. That’s why the takeaways above cost nothing. If your missed-call tally says the leak is real, solo is exactly when cover you don’t have to employ matters most.

Doesn’t Cliniko already do reminders and follow-ups?

Yes, and they are good. Appointment reminders and automatic post-appointment follow-ups are free on every Cliniko plan, and if you have not switched them on you should do that today without paying anyone. What they cannot do is hold a conversation: the messages are one-way, so a patient replying “yes, Tuesday please” goes nowhere. Cliniko can nudge someone, but it cannot offer two times and make the booking, and it cannot answer a phone. That gap is the only thing we sell you.

What happens to patient data?

The booking is created directly in your Cliniko account, so patient records stay where they already live and we do not build a second copy of your database somewhere else. The Cliniko API key is held server-side and never exposed in a browser, which is the single most common mistake we see in clinic sites built by other people. Calls are recorded so you can check what was said, and you decide how long those are kept.

BOOK A CALL

Bring a fortnight’s missed-call tally and your lapsed-patient count. We’ll size the leak against your diary in 20 minutes.

Also see: the AI receptionist service · websites that get you customers · missed call recovery · local SEO · Cliniko, done properly