live · inbound 09:41 · reception engaged
Arbol…Thursday the 14th at 9:20, and I also have—
Caller—sorry, it's not for me. It's for my son.
ArbolOf course — for your son. After school?
Talk over it.
Anyone can synthesise a pleasant voice. A practice phone is judged on the messy half.
People hear the pause, not the voice
Timed across ten languages on five continents, the gap between one person stopping and the next starting lands in the same narrow band everywhere.
Stivers et al., PNAS, 2009
The gap between turns
- Human conversation, ten languages
- 0–200 ms
- Long enough to feel like waiting
- ≈700 ms
- The sound of a machine thinking
- 1,200 ms +
Five beats where a call is usually lost
Illustrative scriptTest every one of these on the demo
Barge-in
Caller—the four o'clock. Four is fine.
Arbol4:00 it is. Holding it now.
It stops the instant you start, and answers what you actually asked.
Spelling
CallerSiobhán. S-I-O-B-H-Á-N.
ArbolSiobhán — S, I, O, B, H, A-acute, N. Right?
Names are read back, never guessed.
Read-back
Calleroh-seven-nine-double-six, three-one-four…
Arbol07966 314 208 — good for a text?
Digits are grouped and confirmed before anything is written.
Language
Caller¿Puedo hablar en español?
ArbolClaro. ¿Martes por la tarde o jueves temprano?
The caller chooses. Same rules, same limits, same record.
Disclosure
CallerWait — are you a real person?
ArbolI'm not. I'm the practice's virtual assistant.
It never claims to be human, and never gets defensive about it.
The beat that is not about scheduling
The moment it must stop being helpful
The wording, the number, who it reaches and what happens if nobody picks up are your clinicians' decisions — per market, written down, not buried in a prompt.
Escalation · hard boundary
Caller“It's my chest. Tight since last night.”
Arbol“I can't advise on that, and I'm not leaving you waiting. Putting you through now.”
An AI voice is an “artificial” voice
FCC ruling, February 8, 2024
Consent can be revoked any reasonable way
FCC rules, effective April 11, 2025 →Recording follows the caller, not your head office
State wiretap statutes vary
No testimonials, no claims, no advice
e.g. Ahpra advertising guidelines →
None of this is legal advice — it is the checklist we configure against with your team. See HIPAA and the BAA, or your market page.
Straight answers
Can we try to break it before we buy?
That is the demo. Talk over it, mis-spell a name at it, switch language halfway, ask it for medical advice. Thirty minutes on a real line.
What accents does it handle?
It runs daily across US, UK, Canadian, Australian and Latin American English, and end to end in Spanish. Very good, not perfect — which is why every call has a route to a human and every failure is logged.
How fast does it answer? Give us a number.
We do not publish one, because an honest figure depends on your carrier, the caller's signal and what has to be looked up mid-sentence. We design the shape of the pause instead: it starts speaking when the answer is certain, and says so out loud when something takes a moment.
Does it work on our number?
Yes. Keep the number you publish and forward or port it. Many practices start in overflow only — it takes what reception cannot reach in time.