Hey there! Chris here from Aeva AI Receptionist for Healthcare.
Something I've been noticing in my conversations with clinic owners lately is that the kind of question they ask has changed.
Two years ago, it was always some version of "will my patients actually accept this?" There was scepticism. Fair scepticism. No one had heard a good AI voice. The ones they'd heard were robotic, awkward, made stuff up.
This month, the question is different. Now it's "how fast can we get this live?"
That's a big shift in a short amount of time. And I don't think enough people in our industry have noticed it yet.
Why patient expectations are shifting (quietly and quickly)
One small thing I noticed this week that points to where this is heading: a UK NHS trust just put out a tender to replace traditional physiotherapy pathways with an AI-led service. Three year contract. Full patient journey. The NHS doesn't move early. It only moves once the evidence is undeniable.
You don't have to have an opinion on that to see what it signals. Patients who experience AI through a public service start expecting the same responsiveness from their private physio, chiro, osteo and every private clinic. The bar is shifting underneath clinic owners whether they want it to or not.
What I keep seeing the top 20% of clinics do about it
They answer every call. Obvious, I know. But 4 in 5 clinics miss calls during the day, almost 100% after hours, and 80% of those patients don’t leave voice messages. The best clinics have figured out that a missed call is a patient who just rang a competitor. They don't let that happen.
They re-engage lapsed patients. Most clinics spend a fortune chasing cold leads through ads. The top practitioners I speak to have worked out that the gold is already in their database. Patients who've been in before, trust them, and just stopped coming back. A simple, personalised check-in brings around 10% of those people back through the door. That's pure revenue, with no ad spend. (it’s what we are now supporting too with patient reactivation calls within the new Aeva Outbound)
They treat the phone as part of the patient experience. The warmth of how someone is greeted sets the tone for everything that follows. Rushed, distracted, or having a bad day receptionists cost bookings. The clinics doing best either have receptionists who are properly supported, or have moved to a system that answers every call with the same tone.
What we're building toward
I get asked a lot what we're doing with Aeva right now. The honest answer is we're going deeper, not wider.
We've just hired two more engineers. We are about to hire a Practice Growth Advisor. Everything we're earning is going back into three things:
The most realistic voice in the category. Because patients can tell, and the second they can tell, trust breaks.
Outbound campaigns. Because helping clinics bring their own lapsed patients back is the biggest untapped revenue in the industry.
Reliability. Because none of the above matters if the system can’t simply collect an email address correctly.
The clinics that moved 6 months ago aren't 6 months ahead. They're years ahead. Their AI has learned the best way to talk with their patients. Their reactivation list has already been worked twice, and the patients their AI booked in six months ago are now referring friends.
That kind of head start doesn't reset when a new clinic decides to catch up. It just keeps compounding the other way.
Every call counts,
Chris Baxter
founder, Aeva AI Receptionist for healthcare
P.S. If you’ve got a story about your AI receptionist, I’d love to hear about it. Hit reply below, I read everything.
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