AI receptionist for opticians and optometry practices

What is an AI receptionist for an opticians practice?

An AI receptionist for an opticians practice picks up the phone, the website chat and the inbox when your team cannot. It books sight tests and contact lens appointments, answers the routine questions that fill a morning, takes messages, and puts urgent callers through to a person when you have told it to. In most independent practices the people who answer the phone are the same people doing everything else. The optometrist is mid sight test, the dispensing optician is fitting frames, and whoever is nearest the desk is adjusting a pair of glasses while the phone rings out. Kalvo answers at the first ring, on the number already printed on your recall letters and appointment cards. It takes the booking or the message in full, so the desk finds a complete record rather than a missed call to chase. What it says is yours. The answers come from practice notes your team writes in ordinary English, so test fees, opening hours and the services you offer stay accurate. It never gives optical or clinical advice, and anything that needs a professional goes to the team.

62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered. Source: 411 Locals, 2016 study

Can it handle sight test bookings and recall season?

Most sight test bookings start with a letter. A patient gets their reminder, rings the practice, and either books there and then or drifts if nobody picks up. Kalvo answers those calls, finds a slot that works, and confirms it back before the letter goes in the recycling. A recall run creates a surge that a small desk cannot absorb. Send a few hundred reminders and the phone rings for a week, on top of the usual walk-ins and collections. Because Kalvo answers every line at once, the tenth caller on a Monday morning is booked as quickly as the first. Rebooking works the same way. A patient who rings to move their appointment is offered another time in the same call, rather than being asked to ring back when the desk is quieter. Plenty of those calls come in the evening, after the patient has opened the post. Kalvo books them at eight at night the same way it does at ten in the morning, so a recall run keeps converting after the practice has closed.

Can it take contact lens reorders and glasses repairs?

Contact lens reorders are the classic quick call that never comes one at a time. Kalvo takes the reorder in full: the patient, the product where the patient knows it, the quantity, and whether they want to collect or have it posted. The desk gets a complete request instead of a voicemail to decode. Repairs work the same way. A snapped arm, a lost screw or a bent frame is logged with the patient's details, what has happened and when they can drop the glasses in, so the team knows what is coming before the patient arrives. Stock and pricing questions are answered from your practice notes: which brands you keep, what a box of dailies costs, how long an order usually takes. What a patient hears matches what your team would say at the desk. Anything clinical goes to the team. A patient asking to change lens type, or describing discomfort with their lenses, is passed to a person rather than answered by guesswork. Kalvo takes requests and questions; it does not give optical advice.

Does it help with reminders and no-shows?

Kalvo sends confirmations and reminders for booked appointments by text, email and call. A sight test booked three weeks out is confirmed at the time and nudged before the day, which is when a quiet cancellation would otherwise become an empty chair in the testing room. The valuable moment is the reply. When a patient answers that they cannot make it, Kalvo offers another slot and captures the rebooking in the same exchange, so a cancellation becomes a moved appointment rather than a gap in the clinic. Calls that come back off a reminder are handled like any other: answered at the first ring, booked or rebooked, and logged for the team. Nothing about a reminder run lands extra work on the desk.

£1,200 the estimated cost of a single missed customer call. Source: BT Business research, 2014