The night shift nobody staffs
A clinic in Beirut closes at seven. Its Instagram and its WhatsApp do not. Between the last patient and the first coffee the same messages arrive: are you open tomorrow, how much is a consultation, where exactly are you, do I need an appointment, can I come at six, and one question that is really for the doctor. By morning there are eleven of them, and three of those patients have already booked with whoever answered first.
An AI receptionist is a small program on the clinic’s own website that answers those messages the moment they arrive, in the language they were written in, using only what the clinic’s pages say. It is not a chatbot that improvises and it is not a voice on the phone: it reads, it answers, and when a question is beyond the pages it hands the conversation to a person on WhatsApp with everything attached.
The six questions, with the answers
These are the shapes of the messages a dental clinic receives after hours, and the answers the receptionist gives from that clinic’s own pages — an example clinic, with the kind of details a clinic’s pages carry. Nothing is invented: the hours come from the hours page, the consultation from the treatments page, the address from the directions page.
Fatih bokra? W adde el consultation?
Bokra l sabet mfattihin men 9:00 la 14:00. El consultation bta5od 30 d2i2a — el se3er 3a safhet el treatments. Baddak eb3atlak el link ta te7joz?
Hours and the treatments page. Lebanese in Latin letters, answered the same way.
Where exactly are you? Is there parking?
We are in Achrafieh, on the second floor above the pharmacy — the directions page has the map and a photo of the entrance. There is street parking on the side road and a paid car park two minutes away.
From the directions page. If the page says nothing about parking, it says so instead of guessing.
Est-ce qu’il faut un rendez-vous ou je peux passer ?
Sur rendez-vous, oui : la plupart des soins sont planifiés. Envoyez-moi le jour qui vous arrange et je le transmets à la clinique sur WhatsApp ; ils confirment le matin.
French in, French out. The booking itself is passed to a person.
بقدر إجي بكرا الساعة 6؟
بكرا العيادة بتسكّر الساعة 7، فالساعة 6 ممكنة إذا في محل. بحوّلك عالواتساب تبع العيادة هلق مع الوقت يلي بدك ياه، وبيأكدولك الصبح.
Arabic in, Arabic out. It never confirms a slot in a diary it cannot see.
Do you do Invisalign, and roughly how long does it take?
Yes — Invisalign is on the treatments page: a first scan, then aligners changed every two weeks, usually over twelve to eighteen months. The exact plan is the dentist’s call after the scan. Want me to pass you to the clinic to book it?
The general answer is on the page; the personal one is handed over.
Ba3d el extraction, normal yebaa el wajaa yomen?
Hayda su2al tebbe w ma fiyi jaweb 3alayh — el doctor lezim yshouf. Iza el waja2 aawi aw fi nazif, ettosel bel 3iyede hala2 3al WhatsApp; b7awlek 3alayhon ma3 rsaltak.
A medical question: it says so and hands over at once, with the message attached.
What it refuses to do
The value of a receptionist is not only what it answers; it is what it declines. This one has four rules, and they are the reason a clinic can leave it running unattended.
- It does not book into the diary. It tells the patient what is possible and hands the booking to the clinic on WhatsApp, where a person confirms it. A receptionist that books into a calendar it cannot see is how double bookings happen.
- It gives no clinical advice. Anything about pain, medication, healing or a diagnosis is handed to the doctor at once, with the message attached.
- It never quotes a price that is not on the site. If the treatments page says “from $50”, it says from $50; if the page says nothing, it says the clinic will confirm.
- It says what it is. Asked whether it is a person, it answers that it is the clinic’s assistant, and offers the human.
How it is set up in two days
Nothing is installed on the clinic’s phone and nothing is trained. The receptionist reads the clinic’s website — hours, address, treatments, prices where they are shown — and that is what it knows. Change a page and its answer changes the same minute. Voice notes are understood as well as typed messages, because half of Lebanon writes with the microphone.
Every conversation is saved, so the clinic can read what patients ask at night and so the hand-over to WhatsApp carries the context. No patient records and no card details: it never asks for them. It can be switched off any month; the website is unaffected.
What it costs
For a clinic that already has a NextGenn site, the receptionist is $400 to set up, then $30 a month billed yearly ($360). Inside the Concierge package — the site with everything switched on, plus the receptionist with its setup and its whole first year — a clinic pays $1,100 in total, which is $200 over the Presence+ site; from the second year, $400 a year keeps the site and the receptionist running together.
Live voice calls come later, once the text receptionist has run: $200 to set up, then $60 a month billed yearly, with 300 minutes included. On a site built elsewhere, the receptionist can usually be added after a short review.
Try it tonight
The receptionist is built into ten finished sites for ten fictional Lebanese businesses, one of them a dental clinic. Open Lumière on your phone, tap the orb, and ask it in Lebanese whether it is open on Saturday. That is the exact thing that goes on a clinic’s site.
