What are missed calls costing your practice?
300
25%
Industry avg. ~25%
$500
First-year production — avg. $1,200+
Your Phone Rings at 8pm. Then Silence.
Most after-hours calls are emergencies, new patients searching “dentist near me”, or rescheduling requests. All time-sensitive. All lost to voicemail.
92% of dental clinics close before 6pm. Patients call anyway.
Traditional answering services charge $3–5/minute and only take messages.
Emergency callers go to the next clinic listed on Google.
New-patient leads searching at night never get a callback fast enough.
Your team starts Monday morning with 40 voicemails to triage.
AI That Works When You Sleep
Wavez covers every minute you’re not in the office — and treats every caller like your best receptionist would.
True 24/7 Coverage
Every night, every weekend, every holiday. No exceptions, no extra fees.
After-Hours Booking
Books appointments into your calendar in real time, even at 2am.
Emergency Routing
Detects urgent situations and follows your custom escalation protocol.
SMS Confirmations
Patients get appointment details instantly via text.
Flat Monthly Pricing
No per-minute fees on standard plans. Unlike legacy answering services.
Morning Summary
You start each day with a clean report — calls handled, bookings made, emergencies routed.
After-Hours: Traditional vs Wavez
Metric
Without Wavez
With Wavez
Coverage hours
Mon–Fri 8–5
24/7/365
Cost
$800–$1,500/mo + per minute
From $599/mo flat
Books appointments?
No (messages only)
Yes (real-time)
Emergency response time
15–60 min
Instant
Monday morning voicemails
40+
0
Voicemail Leakage: Where After-Hours Revenue Actually Goes
Voicemail leakage is the share of callers who reach your voicemail and never leave a message, never call back, and never appear in any report you look at. It is the single most under-measured number in a dental practice.
Why the message never gets left
A patient calling at 7pm with a broken crown is not researching. They are trying to solve a problem tonight. Voicemail asks them to wait until tomorrow, hope for a callback, and hope a slot exists. Google offers them four other practices on the same screen.
The behaviour is entirely rational, which is why the leak is so consistent. Practices that start recording after-hours call outcomes are usually surprised less by the volume than by how few of those callers ever left a message.
When the calls actually arrive
After-hours volume is not spread evenly across the night. It clusters in three predictable bands, and each band has a different intent — which matters because it changes what a good answer looks like.
- 5pm-8pm on weekdays: the largest band. Working patients calling the moment they finish their own day. Overwhelmingly routine booking and rescheduling.
- 8pm-11pm: smaller volume, higher urgency. Pain, swelling and trauma dominate. These callers need triage and an escalation path, not a booking slot.
- Saturday and Sunday mornings: new-patient search traffic. Someone has just searched "dentist near me" and is dialling from the results page. Whoever answers wins the patient.
- Monday 8-9am: technically business hours, but functionally after-hours overflow, because it is the backlog of everything above arriving at once.
How to measure your own leakage in one week
Pull a call-detail report from your phone provider for the last 30 days and filter to calls outside opening hours. Count the total, then count how many left a voicemail. The gap between those two numbers is your leakage, and it is typically 70-90% of after-hours calls.
Then check how many of the messages that were left resulted in a booked appointment. Multiply the remainder by your average new-patient value to get an honest annual figure. Practices that do this arithmetic rarely need a sales pitch afterwards.
- Measure before you buy anything — your own numbers beat any vendor statistic.
- Count weekend mornings separately; they behave like new-patient acquisition, not service.
- Track the same report 30 days after go-live to confirm the leak actually closed.
Model your own numbers with the missed call revenue calculator or read the full dental AI receptionist guide.