# From Voicemail to Booked: A Dental Group's Story > How JR Dental Care's four Jacksonville practices moved from a voicemail pile to booked appointments with GetHelpdesk.AI, drawn from the group's published case study. **Author:** gethelpdesk-ai **Published:** 2024-09-30 **Category:** case-studies **Tags:** AI, dental-practice, case-study, front-desk **Canonical:** https://gethelpdesk.ai/blog/dental-group-success-story-gethelpdeskai/ --- ## The Group JR Dental Care runs four practices in Jacksonville, Florida, all on Open Dental. Before GetHelpdesk, calls went to a physical phone with voicemail. This post retells the group's story from its published [case study](/case-studies/jr-dental/). The account of the group, including the interview quotes and figures, comes from that case study. --- ## Before: Messages on a Phone at the Front Desk Dr. Obdulia Rondon described the old routine in her interview. Messages were worked through at the end of the day or before lunch. Each one had to be replayed to catch the callback number, and sometimes a message had to be played three times because it was hard to understand. The phone could not redial. The cost showed up with patients. People told the team they had left a message and nobody called back. During new-patient campaigns, the team sometimes returned a call and heard the patient had already booked at another practice. The messages were sitting on a phone at the front desk, not in a place the team could work through all day. --- ## The Hesitation Was About Mapping Dr. Rondon's main concern before signing up was the mapping: how a call would be handled for a specific doctor, hygienist or template, how long it would take, and how the system would know the right path. That is a fair worry for a group. Each of the four practices has its own providers, hygienists, appointment types, templates and approved time windows, and the AI has to follow those rules before it offers a time. JR Dental mapped each practice's rules, including routing and handoff, before Amy, the AI receptionist, offered appointments. Dr. Rondon said she needed time to get it right, and that the team needs to know each of those rules is mapped correctly. If you are weighing the same question for your own group, [what a dental group should require](/blog/what-a-dental-group-should-require/) lists the points to put in writing, and [taking AI from one office to the whole group](/blog/from-one-office-to-the-whole-group/) covers rollout order. --- ## What the Group Reports According to the case study, in the first 90 days of the rollout JR Dental's practices: - booked **230+ new-patient appointments** - booked **1.2K+ appointments** in total, across all appointment types The case study also lists 11K+ calls received. Dr. Rondon's summary: "Before GetHelpdesk, calls could sit in voicemail. Amy now handles booking and rescheduling requests that fit our rules, while our team handles exceptions." Per the case study, Amy handles booking, rescheduling, cancellations and routine practice questions that fit the mapped rules. The JR Dental team handles financial questions and anything that needs a decision outside the approved workflow. --- ## The Other Channels The case study also describes three things beyond the phone call itself: - **SMS follow-up.** One practice uses a text path for eligible calls that end early, so the patient can continue by text instead of waiting for a callback. - **Insurance-card intake.** Patients can use a private upload link instead of reading card details aloud, and the details land in a structured record for the team to review. - **Website chatbot.** Patients can ask about services, hours, insurance or locations on the JR Dental site and then start an approved booking or rescheduling request. On pricing, GetHelpdesk.AI's [single plan](/pricing/) is $399 a month and includes up to 600 inbound calls, outbound calling, SMS follow-ups, a website chatbot and a dashboard of all calls. Groups and DSOs are quoted by number of locations. --- ## What a Group Can Take From This - **Start with the booking rules.** The hesitation in this story was about mapping, and the work went there too. - **Judge the system by what happens to the call it cannot finish.** Here the team handles exceptions and financial questions. - **Measure from your own phone log.** The quoted figures are JR Dental's. Your results depend on your call volume, your mix of new and existing patients and how well your rules are mapped. [Finding your real missed-call number](/blog/find-your-real-missed-call-number/) is the place to start. For the multi-location PMS questions, see [AI receptionists for multi-location DSOs](/blog/ai-receptionist-multi-location-dso/). --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Does the AI replace the front desk?** In the case study it works alongside the team. It handles mapped booking and routine questions, and the team handles exceptions. **Where can I see the full story?** The [JR Dental case study](/case-studies/jr-dental/) has the interview clips, the full metrics and the FAQ. --- Ready to see what this looks like for your group? [Book a demo with GetHelpdesk.AI](https://tidycal.com/19weppm/demo-gethelpdeskai).