Episode 417: Answer Every Call: Practical AI That Recovers Lost Revenue with Varun Ram

Lester De Alwis: Welcome to the Less Insurance Dependence Podcast. I’m your host, Lester De Alwis, and this show is dedicated to helping dental professionals build stronger, more profitable practices with less reliance on insurance. And this episode is brought to you by Ekwa Marketing, the digital growth partner behind this podcast and a trusted resource for dental practices looking to strengthen their online presence and reduce their dependence on PPOs. And as always, Ekwa has something special for all listeners. Keep listening until the end of this episode to hear more. And today, I am excited to welcome Varun Ram, founder of PracticePilot AI. Varun brings over 20 years of experience in technology and IT management, including senior leadership roles in enterprise software and patient-facing operations. He built PracticePilot AI to help independent dental practices recover missed calls, reduce staff workload, and make it easier for patients to book. And today’s episode is called Answer Every Call: Practical AI That Recovers Lost Revenue.

Lester De Alwis: We are going to talk about how many patients’ practices lose at the front desk and what it takes to win them back. So, Varun, welcome to the show.

Varun Ram: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Lester. Definitely look forward to, excited about this opportunity.

Lester De Alwis: Amazing, amazing. Now, you founded PracticePilot, of course, I’m interested to hear about the backstory of it, and also why does missed call recovery matter so much right now?

Varun Ram: So just to give you some background, right? I come from a family of dentists. My grandfather was one of the first dentists in India. My uncle was a dentist. Several of my cousins and second cousins are dentists. And also my own pain points as a patient were part of what led me to start PracticePilot AI last summer, right? And what kept drawing me in was experience around the care. As a patient, you want to be able to reach the practice, understand what happens next, and feel that your request has been heard, right? And those things sound simple, but they actually make a real difference to the experience. And at the same time, the person at the front desk may be helping someone check out, answering another line, and dealing with an insurance question, and you can have a caring team and still have a patient who cannot get through to you, right?

Varun Ram: And my background in technology and transformation, I have, as you mentioned, more than 20 years in how technology can make complicated operations work better. And PracticePilot AI grew out of bringing that experience to a problem that felt close to home. So that was the impetus for me to start the company.

Lester De Alwis: All right. Amazing, amazing. Again, the point about why does missed call recovery matter so much right now?

Varun Ram: That’s a great question, right? And I think it matters because the phone is one of the moments where the patient’s interest becomes very real, right? They have moved beyond looking at a website. They’re asking for help, trying to make an appointment or trying to get a question answered. And if that moment ends without a useful response, right, the practice may never know what is missed, right? And the hard part is that a missed call does not necessarily mean anyone did something wrong. So if you picture a front desk team member helping a patient, right, who has a question about a bill, another patient wants to check out and the phone rings, every person in that situation deserves attention, right? And the team members simply cannot give all of them a good conversation at the same time, right?

Varun Ram: And then after hours, there’s actually a different version of the same problem. A patient finally has some quiet time, right? A moment to make the call, but the office is closed, right? And then leaving a voicemail may work for some people, but others may prefer to try another practice or put the decision off. So we should measure that instead of assuming every caller would come back. And for a practice that wants to grow with less dependence on insurance, like your podcast, the first conversation deserves particular attention, right? You’re asking patients to choose your practice because of the care, the relationship, and the experience. And being easy to reach is part of delivering on that promise, and it does not remove someone’s financial concerns or replace a thoughtful insurance strategy. It gives your team a chance to have that conversation.

Varun Ram: And this is honestly where I see the useful role of AI, right? You start with a clear gap such as after hours calls or a defined overflow period, and then let the assistant handle approved routine questions, capture what the patient needs, and support scheduling where the practice’s integration has been configured and tested. And anything that needs a person should reach a person or have a clear follow-up owner. And the result I would look for is very practical, right? More patient requests reaching a useful next step, fewer unresolved calls, and a team that has better information when they follow up. So the question is not just whether the phone was answered, it is whether the patient was helped.

Lester De Alwis: All right, all right. I understand. Now, what does one missed call actually cost an independent practice that wants to grow without leaning on insurance?

Varun Ram: That’s a great question, Lester. And honestly, I would say there’s no single number for every call, right? A vendor calling the office, an existing patient asking for directions, and a prospective patient trying to book an appointment are three different situations, right? I would start by separating those calls and identifying unique patient opportunities. So if someone tries three times, that is not necessarily three new patients, right? And here’s a simple example with made-up numbers, right? Suppose that over a month, a practice finds 20 unique new patient inquiries that were not initially answered or resolved, right? If a better process helped half of those people book, that would be 10 appointments, right? If eight attended and the practice collected, let’s say, an average of $150 for each first visit, that would be $1,200 in first visit collections.

Varun Ram: And that example, right, is deliberately modest. It does not assume that every caller who calls books an appointment and every booking shows up or every patient accepts a large treatment plan. It also does not assume that all eight visits are additional. Some of those people might have come in through the existing callback process anyways. To estimate the improvement, you need to account for that. And the other thing I want to add, right, is collections are not necessarily always profit. There’s a cost of providing the care, right? Plus the cost of the phone solution, any extra follow-up work. The owner should really look at what is left after these costs, not just the largest revenue number on a dashboard. And there may also be a longer relationship, right, based on that. Future hygiene visits, clinically appropriate treatment and referrals, that can be valuable, but I wouldn’t measure it over time.

Varun Ram: I would not take the highest possible lifetime value and attach it to every unanswered ring.

Lester De Alwis: Right. I think that is where the marketing dollar is quietly leaking.

Varun Ram: Absolutely. And existing patients matter as well, right? A missed schedule and request can leave a gap in the schedule, and a patient who needs help may have to repeat the story to several people. Those are real service and operating costs even when they do not represent a new patient sale. And for a practice seeking more independence from insurance, my advice is to track that full sequence, right? From inquiry to useful conversation to confirmed booking to completed visit and actual collections. That lets you see whether your response process is creating additional value, and a missed call is a signal to investigate, not automatically a lost patient.

Lester De Alwis: Yeah, I think the patient journey from the first inquiry onwards.

Varun Ram: Exactly. That’s,

Lester De Alwis: That’s interesting. Yeah. So how do missed calls quietly waste the money a practice spends on marketing?

Varun Ram: Again, another really good question, right? I would say honestly, from my perspective, marketing and the phone experience are connected, right? Because someone might find you through, let’s say, Google, read your reviews, visit the website and decide to call, but a lot has already happened by that point, right? If the call ends without a conversation or a clear follow-up, you may lose that chance to convert that interest into a visit, right? And I would not immediately conclude that the marketing failed necessarily. The campaign may have done its job, brought the right person to the practice, but the next question is what happened after that person reached out. Equally, if the calls are the wrong fit, answering more of them will not fix the targeting. You need both parts of the picture, right?

Varun Ram: So I just want to give you a hypothetical example, Lester. Let’s say a campaign costs $2,000, right? And that produces 40 qualified, unique new patient phone inquiries, right? That is $50 per inquiry. If the practice ultimately gets eight completed new patient visits from those inquiries, the marketing cost is $250 per completed visit, right? Now suppose better call handling and follow-up help the same campaign produce 12 completed visits instead of eight. That marketing cost would fall to about $167 per completed visit. You would still need to add the cost, of course, of improving the response process, but you can see why the outcome after the call matters as much as the original inquiry count. So in a real practice, what I would do is track the source where it is known, the reason for the call,

Varun Ram: whether that was a useful conversation, right? And whether an appointment was confirmed and whether the patient attended. I would also look at when the call arrives. So let’s say your marketing brings interest during evenings, but your response process only works during office hours, that is worth addressing. So for me, the useful conversation between the practice and marketing team is, are we generating the right inquiries and are we helping those people take the next step? And marketing gets the phone to ring, but your response helps turn the interest into an appointment.

Lester De Alwis: Amazing, amazing. I think when we’re talking about calls and marketing, this part is also very interesting because our friends at Ekwa Marketing are also doing marketing and they also want to help practices with their marketing and increase their online visibility. And if you’re listening in and if you want to make sure your marketing brings in patients, you can actually book a complimentary marketing strategy meeting at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm . You can understand your online visibility and then connect the dots with what Varun has been talking about. Now, Varun, let’s talk about how AI helps. Now, how can AI lighten the front desk workload without patients feeling like they’re talking to a robot?

Varun Ram: That’s a great question, right? So Lester, what I would do is honestly, I would start with what the patient needs from the interaction at the end of the day, right? So what do they need? Is it to be heard? Is it to get a clear answer where one is available? And is it to know what will happen next? So a pleasant voice helps, but it cannot make up for an assistant that interrupts, repeats the same question, or leaves that person stuck, right? So what I would do, Lester, is be transparent, first of all, that it’s an AI assistant, right? And then keep the conversation very simple. So ask one question at a time, let the patient finish, confirm the important details, especially the name, callback number and appointment date.

Varun Ram: And if something was misunderstood, make it easy to correct without starting the whole conversation over and over. Because as you know, if the AI is constantly asking the same questions, that could get extremely frustrating to the patient, right? And also the second part of it, from my perspective, is that the practice also has to decide what the assistant is allowed to do. So routine questions about office hours or directions are different from a clinical concern or a complicated billing issue, right? So the assistant should work from approved practice information and know when the team needs to take over. And if a caller asks for a person, there should be a clear route with an honest explanation if nobody is available right away. And also, I would say that scheduling is a good example of why the details matter, right?

Varun Ram: Because an appointment request is not a confirmed appointment. So when the practice’s integration and scheduling rules have been tested, the assistant can support booking within that setup, but until a booking succeeds, it should not tell the patient that a slot is confirmed, right? And if it can’t complete the task for some reason, it should capture that request and explain the next step. And insurance questions need the same care, right? Because the assistant can use approved information about the practice’s policies, but it should not guess that a patient’s specific treatment is covered or promise an out-of-pocket amount. Those conversations need verified information and often a team member. And I would just say that a useful AI assistant knows when to bring in an actual person, right? Because AI obviously should not be doing everything and it should know when to bring in a live person.

Lester De Alwis: Right, right. And I think, like you said, it’s the right AI that can have all the right conditions and the right rules and regulations that can help to free the team to focus on the patient in front of them, right?

Varun Ram: Yeah, exactly. And I will also say, Lester, that I would involve the front desk in the setup and start with a manageable set of calls, right? So let’s say as a company, review the difficult calls together with the front office, right? And work with them to set that up. And if the assistant struggles with a request, change the workflow, right? Or bring in a person sooner. So you do not build patient trust by insisting that automation handles everything, right? You build it by making the experience dependable and giving patients an understandable path to help, is what I would say.

Lester De Alwis: Right. Right. Amazing. Now, of course, what is one thing a dentist can check this week to see how many calls they are missing?

Varun Ram: I would say one thing the dental practice can do, and the owner of that practice can do, is ask your phone provider for the last seven consecutive days of inbound call logs, including evenings and over the weekend, right? And sit down with the front desk and ask one question: which genuine patient requests still did not get a useful response, right? You can learn a lot before buying anything. So I would say start with the phone system’s categories. They already have a lot of categories, right? Like answered, unanswered, abandoned, and sent to voicemail. But check what those labels mean. Some systems count a call as answered when an automated menu picks up, right? And that does not really tell you whether the patient reached someone or got the help they needed.

Varun Ram: And next, I would remove obvious spam and vendor calls from your patient opportunity review and group repeat attempts from the same person where you can do that reliably, right? And keep the raw call count too, because repeat attempts can show frustration, but do not turn three attempts into three lost patients. And I would also say for each unresolved patient request, look for a callback and its outcome. And that’s key, right? Because then you can ask the team, did the team make an attempt? Did they reach the person? Was the question answered or an appointment confirmed? And a completed callback attempt and a resolved patient request are different things, right? Sometimes a request was handled through another channel. So check before you label it lost. And I would say pick one improvement based on what you find. It could be a clear callback owner, different coverage at lunch or a focused after hours AI pilot.

Varun Ram: Give the team a specific outcome to track and review another comparable week. So seven days is a starting point, especially for a smaller office. Extend the review if the call volume is low, right? And I would say also the first step is visibility. Once you know where patients are getting stuck, you can choose a solution that fits the problem. Pull seven days of phone logs and find the patient requests that still need a next step, is how I would advise the practice.

Lester De Alwis: Amazing, amazing. Again, that’s some great advice shared by you, Varun. And again, this podcast is about taking action. And if our listeners want to take action about what they’ve just listened to and want to fix their missed call recoveries and get back to how they can reduce their marketing leaks on dollars, how can they reach out to you and get your assistance?

Varun Ram: Thanks, Lester. First of all, before the contact and closing this, the main thing I would leave people with, with the podcast of having me on here, is that the phone is a part of the patient experience. A good team could still help, covering every request. Before making a technology decision, I would say look at your own calls and find where patients are not getting a clear next step, right? Start there, make one improvement, and measure what happens. If listeners want to see how we approach this at PracticePilot AI, they can visit practicepilotai.com, or they could also reach out to me at Varun@practicepilota-ai.com and I’m happy to do a demo and answer any questions and understand their pain points.

Lester De Alwis: Amazing, amazing. Varun, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.

Varun Ram: Thank you so much, Lester, for having me. I enjoyed the experience, and thanks again, everyone, for listening.

Lester De Alwis: Now, the biggest takeaway for me is that a practice cannot grow if patients cannot reach it, and the right tools make sure every call counts. So if you’re ready to take action on what we’ve covered today, you can schedule a complimentary marketing strategy meeting with Ekwa at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm . And if you’re looking for coaching and mentorship, you can always book a complimentary coaching strategy meeting with Gary Takacs at lessinsurancedependence.com/csm  now. You can also reach out to Varun, and Varun’s details will be in the show notes of this episode, and you can get all these resources from lessinsurancedependence.com/podcast , and you can get all these for your practice and take your practice to the next level. Now, practices that break free from insurance are the ones that capture every patient who reaches out, answers the call, books the patient, and then the freedom follows.

Lester De Alwis: So thank you for listening to the Less Insurance Dependence Podcast. I am Lester De Alwis, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.