300
25%
$500
Backup For A Busy Front Desk
Dental Call Overflow, Answered in Under 2 Seconds
Your team is not the problem — the second, third and fourth simultaneous call is. Wavez picks up everything your front desk cannot, books it, and hands you a clean log.
2nd
Call Is Where Loss Starts
<2s
Overflow Pickup
0
Calls To Voicemail
HIPAA-Compliant + BAA
4.9★ Avg Patient Rating
1M+ Calls Answered
SOC 2 Aligned
Overflow Is Not A Staffing Failure. It Is A Queueing Problem.
One receptionist can hold exactly one conversation. The moment a second patient calls — while your team is checking someone out, taking payment, or already on the phone — that call queues, rolls to voicemail, or simply rings out. Nobody did anything wrong. The revenue still leaves.
Call volume is not evenly spread: Monday 8-10am and lunchtime carry the spike.
A patient who hits hold music or voicemail dials the next practice on Google, often within 60 seconds.
Rollover to a personal mobile means clinical staff answer phones mid-procedure.
Traditional overflow answering services bill per minute and only take a message.
You cannot see the size of the problem, because unanswered calls rarely appear in your PMS.
A Second Line That Actually Closes The Booking
Wavez sits behind your existing phone system as the overflow destination. Your team keeps answering the calls it can; everything else lands on an AI that books rather than takes messages.
Rollover, Not Replacement
Your front desk still answers first. Wavez only takes what would have queued, rolled over, or rung out.
Books, Never Messages
The overflow caller leaves with a confirmed appointment, not a promise of a callback.
Handles The Spike
Ten simultaneous overflow calls are handled at the same speed as one. There is no queue.
Emergency Escalation
Urgent callers are detected and routed to your on-call protocol instead of being booked routinely.
Flat Monthly Cost
No per-minute overflow billing. Standard plans are $599/mo and $999/mo.
Overflow Reporting
You finally see how many calls your front desk was never able to reach, by hour and day.
Overflow Handling Compared
Metric
Without Wavez
With Wavez
Second simultaneous call
Hold or voicemail
Answered in under 2s
Outcome of the call
Message taken
Appointment booked
Cost model
$3-5 per minute
Flat monthly plan
Peak-hour capacity
1 call at a time
Unlimited concurrent
Visibility
None
Per-hour overflow report
How Overflow Coverage Actually Gets Configured
Overflow is a routing decision before it is a technology decision. These are the four setups practices actually use, and when each one makes sense.
Setup 1 — Ring-then-roll (most common)
Your main line rings the front desk for a fixed number of seconds — typically 15 to 20, about four rings — and anything unanswered rolls to Wavez. Your team keeps the relationships it already has with regular patients, and no caller ever hears a fifth ring.
This is the default recommendation for single-location practices with one or two people on the desk. It changes nothing about how your team works; it only removes the failure mode at the end.
Setup 2 — Busy-only overflow
Calls route to Wavez only when every front-desk extension is already engaged. Nothing rolls over during quiet periods, so your team retains full control of the phones and the AI exists purely as spike capacity.
Practices that are protective of the patient relationship usually start here, then widen to ring-then-roll once they have read a few weeks of transcripts.
Setup 3 — Time-banded
Overflow is active during known peaks — Monday mornings, the lunch hour, the last 30 minutes of the day — and off the rest of the time. If your call data shows a clear concentration, this captures most of the loss with the smallest change.
Setup 4 — Full front line with human escalation
Wavez answers everything first and transfers to a human whenever the caller asks, or whenever the conversation leaves the scheduling, FAQ and intake scope. Multi-location groups and practices without a dedicated receptionist tend to end up here.
- Every setup keeps a live-transfer path — no caller is ever trapped with the AI.
- Escalation rules are yours: a number, an on-call rota, or an immediate SMS to the practice manager.
- Switching between setups is a configuration change, not a reinstall.
How to size your own overflow problem before you buy anything
Ask your phone provider for a call-detail report covering the last 30 days and count three things: calls that rang out, calls answered after 20+ seconds, and calls that hit voicemail during business hours. That total is your overflow volume.
Multiply the share of those that were new patients by your average new-patient value. That is the number worth comparing against any monthly fee — and it is usually the argument that settles the decision.
- Most general practices find 12-22% of business-hour calls are effectively unanswered.
- New-patient calls skew heavily toward the peaks, which is exactly when overflow occurs.
- The missed-call calculator on this site does the arithmetic if you have the three inputs.
Model your own numbers with the missed call revenue calculator or read the full dental AI receptionist guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Resources
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State of Dental Call Handling Report
How US dental clinics handle (and mishandle) calls.