Telephone calls are the lifeline for optometrists. At RingIQ, we’ve managed over 300,000 phone calls for optometrists and discovered that patient appointments are most often booked through phone calls. Despite their importance, 20% of calls to an eye doctor’s office go unanswered. While some doctors believe this is due to after-hours calls, the truth is that 80% of these missed calls occur during business hours—and critically, most of these missed callers do not call back.
The Impact of Missed Calls on Eye Care Practices
A detailed analysis reveals that 20% of these unanswered calls are from people trying to book an eye exam. In other words, missed calls equal missed patients. Receptionists in most offices are juggling multiple tasks: greeting patients, handling medical forms, directing traffic, printing invoices, processing credit cards, and answering the phone. It’s understandable that assisting a patient in the office often takes priority over answering a ringing phone. However, we know that more than half of patients who are transferred to voicemail hang up, and most of them do not attempt to call back.
How RingIQ’s AI Call Assistant Can Help
RingIQ offers a solution with our AI Call Assistant, a smart, fluent, and professional AI agent that knows your practice inside and out. It’s capable of handling after-hours calls, busy lines, and situations where the phone goes unanswered. The AI Call Assistant understands your available appointments, insurance provisions, services, pricing, and more. With RingIQ, your missed call rate can drop from 20% to less than 5%. Our AI can pick up after 5 rings, manage busy lines, and handle calls after hours and on weekends—ensuring that when you’re unavailable, your patients are still taken care of.
Every patient call can be reviewed and reported in the RingIQ Dashboard, where you’ll see appointment requests booked and not booked, along with call summaries that offer insights on how to improve your existing call flow. Most importantly, with RingIQ, missed calls are no longer missed opportunities. Offices using our service have seen 12-15 more patient appointments per month, adding up to as much as $6000 in revenue. And with RingIQ’s 24/7 AI Call Assistant, you’ll never have to worry about being short a receptionist due to unexpected situations again.
