With Retell, we’ve increased scheduling NPS by 38%, and filled underutilized provider capacity, allowing our team to focus on meaningful patient care instead of phone tag.
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Dental Answering Service That Books Patients and Flags Emergencies 24/7
5.0
ON G2
Retell answers dental patient calls 24/7 on your existing number, books cleanings and new-patient exams on the call, and gets dental emergencies to your on-call dentist by your practice's rules, under a signed BAA.
Trusted by over 4,000 businesses powering 100+ million calls per month.
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How It Works
Launch your dental office answering service in four steps.
Build your dental call flow
Set up the agent in the no-code dashboard or through the API, then point it at your schedule and practice FAQs: hours, providers, accepted insurance plans and new-patient forms.
Test it on real patient calls
Run it against the calls your practice gets, from cleaning bookings to a knocked-out tooth at 9pm on a Saturday, and confirm it books and escalates the way your practice decides.
Keep your practice number and go live
Keep your practice number over SIP trunking or call forwarding, or take a new one. Go live on one line or one location, check the patient experience, then expand to voice, SMS and chat.
Monitor bookings and emergencies
Every call is transcribed, summarized and tagged by outcome. Track bookings, emergency escalations and patient sentiment in the dashboard, listen live when you need to, and adjust the agent from real calls.
Use Cases
What the dental answering service handles on every call
Books cleanings, exams and new-patient visits on the call
It checks your schedule during the call and books cleanings, exams and new-patient visits into open slots, so a new patient doesn't hang up and book with the next practice that answers.
Fills broken appointments and hygiene recall
It moves or cancels an appointment and offers the next open time, so the chair doesn't sit empty. With batch calling, it can reach patients due for hygiene recall and confirm upcoming visits.
Gets dental emergencies to your on-call dentist
It asks the questions you set about pain, swelling, bleeding or a broken or knocked-out tooth, then routes the call to your on-call dentist the way your practice decides. It doesn't diagnose or make a clinical call.
An after-hours dental answering service that can tell a toothache from a knocked-out tooth
With a traditional answering service, triage depends on whether the operator can tell a toothache from a knocked-out tooth, and the message to your on-call dentist rarely says how urgent it is. Retell asks the same triage questions on every call and passes the full transcript along with the transfer.
Answers insurance and new-patient questions
Patients hear your current hours, providers, accepted insurance plans and what to bring to a first visit from your knowledge base. Anything that needs a live check with the insurer goes to your team as a transfer or a scheduled callback.
Connects to Open Dental, Dentrix and your calendar
Retell connects to Open Dental and Dentrix through a custom function against their APIs, and to calendars and CRMs through secure webhooks or Zapier, Make and n8n. Practices that would rather not build the connection can use Keragon, a HIPAA-ready automation platform with a Retell connector.
Built for Contact Centers, Not Demos
Retell is the AI Voice Platform Enterprise Contact Centers Run On
Retell lets you build, test and deploy AI phone agents that handle real call volume, so your team spends its time on the conversations that need a person.
Feature
Why dental practices choose Retell over a traditional answering service
Sounds like your business
Pick from 100+ lifelike voices or clone your own, and tune tone and language so the agent matches a dental office or a law firm and greets callers in your business name, warm, human-like conversations instead of an outdated phone tree.
Books into your calendar, not just a message pad
The agent checks live availability and writes the appointment into Cal.com or Google Calendar during the call, so a captured call becomes a booked job. Pine Park Health raised scheduling NPS by 38% after putting calls through a voice agent. Results vary by setup.
Reads and writes your CRM mid-call
Connect HubSpot, Salesforce, Go High Level, Cal.com, and Google Calendar natively, or anything else through Zapier, n8n, or a webhook. The agent looks up a patient, a client, or an order while the caller is on the line, and writes the result back.
Runs on the number you already have
Keep your carrier, your number, and your phone system. Connect through SIP trunking with Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys, or Five9, or forward the calls you want answered. Nothing about your published number changes.
Answers in roughly 600 milliseconds
End-to-end latency of about 600ms with proprietary turn-taking means callers never sit through dead air or talk over the agent. It handles interruptions and barge-in the way a strong receptionist does.
Never a missed call, never a busy signal
The agent answers every call at once, around the clock, starting at 20 concurrent calls and scaling on request. Callers who reach voicemail rarely leave one and rarely call back, and industry research puts the average missed call at about $12.15 in lost value. Results vary.
Scores 100% of calls
Every call is transcribed, summarized, and tagged by outcome through post-call analysis, and every booking lands in your calendar and CRM. Watch booking rate, missed-call recovery, and transfer rate in a dashboard, catch the questions the agent fumbles, and retrain the flow, instead of reviewing a small sample by hand.
Catch the transfers that fail
Transfers are where a front desk loses people. See which handoffs connected, which rang out, and which calls ended with nothing, then fix the routing rule behind them.
Test it before your callers do
Turn your real scenarios into a simulation suite and rerun it on every prompt change, so a fix for one caller never breaks the booking flow for the next.
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- Hubspot
- Twilio
- Vonage
- Go High Level
- n8n
- Zapier
- Salesforce
- Hubspot
- Twillio
- Vonage
- Go High Level
- 8n8
- Zapier
- Salesforce
- Avaya
- Genesys
- Five9
- Amazon Connect
- Telnyx
- Make
- Cal.com
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- Avaya
- Genesys
- Five9
- Amazon Connect
- Telnyx
- Make
- Cal.com
Pricing
Cut Costs by 90% with AI phone Agents
Pay as you go
$0 to start.
$0.07–$0.31 per minute – Pay only for what you use.
60 mins of free access.
20 concurrent calls.
10 Free Knowledge Bases.
Enterprise Plan
For companies with large volumes, data or deployment requirements, or support needs.
White glove service for your use case.
Premium support with dedicated solution engineer teams.
Custom pricing and concurrent calls based on your needs
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
How does a dental answering service handle emergency calls?
Retell asks the questions your practice wants asked, like whether a tooth was knocked out or broken, whether there's swelling, or how severe the pain is. It then follows your escalation rules and gets the call to your on-call dentist the way you've set up. It doesn't diagnose or make a clinical call.
Is Retell HIPAA compliant for dental practices?
Yes. Retell is HIPAA compliant, and you self-sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) at no extra cost before patient health information goes through the agent. Call data runs on SOC 2 Type I and Type II certified infrastructure.
Can Retell book appointments into our schedule?
Yes. It checks availability during the call and books, reschedules or cancels appointments. It connects to Open Dental and Dentrix through a custom function against their APIs, and to calendars and other tools through secure webhooks or Zapier, Make and n8n.
Can Retell answer insurance questions?
Retell answers common insurance questions from your practice's own information, like which plans you accept, and can look up a patient's account during the call. Anything that needs a live check with the insurer goes to your team as a transfer or a scheduled callback.
How much does a dental answering service cost with Retell?
Retell is usage-based and billed per minute of call time, with $10 in free credits to start. There's no platform fee, no monthly contract and no per-call fee. Rates vary with the model and voice you choose.
Does Retell answer calls in languages other than English?
Yes. Retell handles 55+ languages the same way it handles English, so patients don't wait for a bilingual staff member.
Can Retell transfer a patient to a person?
Yes. When a patient needs your team, Retell warm-transfers the call with the full conversation and caller details attached, so nobody starts from scratch.
