Every principal has run the same maths in their head. The phone keeps slipping, so the answer must be another person on the front desk. Then the salary, the recruitment, the training, and the holiday cover all land at once, and the problem still is not solved by half five on a Friday.
The honest question is not whether you need help answering the phone. You clearly do. The question is whether another hire is actually the cheapest, most reliable way to get it.
What a dental receptionist really costs
Start with the number that gets quoted in interviews, then add everything that does not. A skilled dental receptionist costs roughly £30,000 to £40,000 per year once you load in employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, training, and the cost of the recruiter who found them. That is the fully loaded figure, not the headline salary.
Then there is turnover. Front desk roles in dentistry churn fast, and a typical receptionist seat turns over roughly every twelve weeks. Every cycle means another advert, another stack of CVs, another fortnight of training while the new person learns your fee guide, your treatment coordinator handover, and your PMS. During that ramp, the phone is answered worse, not better.
Add the hidden costs that never make it onto the job spec. The principal or practice manager loses hours to interviewing and onboarding. The rest of the team carries the desk while the seat is empty. A new starter mishears a fee, misroutes an urgent caller, or books a private consultation into an NHS slot, and each small error has a real cost. None of this shows up in the salary line, but all of it is paid for every twelve weeks.
You are not paying for one receptionist. You are paying for a seat that empties roughly every twelve weeks and has to be refilled.
What the salary still does not buy you
Here is the part the salary never covers. Even a brilliant receptionist is one person, in one chair, during opening hours.
- They take a lunch break, and the phone rings through it.
- They go home at five, and the evening enquiries go to voicemail.
- They do not work Saturday and Sunday, when a patient with a flaring tooth is calling every local number.
- They can hold one line at a time, so the second and third caller during a busy morning hear an engaged tone.
- They get ill, take holiday, and have off days, and on those days cover is thin or gone.
This is not a criticism of receptionists. It is simply the shape of a human role. And it is the exact reason around 35% of new patient calls go unanswered, almost all of them at lunch, in the evening, or at the weekend. Adding one more person narrows the gap a little. It does not close it.
What an AI voice receptionist is for
An AI voice receptionist is not a replacement for your team or a phone tree with a friendlier voice. It is the layer that makes sure no new patient call is ever missed, at any hour, no matter how many ring at once.
SelenicAI answers every call, including after hours and weekends. It qualifies the new patient enquiry by treatment interest, private versus NHS, and urgency. It books straight into the practice diary and syncs to Dentally, SOE, R4 or Kodak. It handles recall and reschedule, triages urgent cases, and sends SMS and email confirmations so patients actually turn up. It is UK GDPR and PECR compliant with UK data residency and a full call audit log. It does not take lunch, it does not leave after twelve weeks, and it answers the fourth simultaneous call exactly as well as the first.
The comparison, side by side
Here is the same set of demands placed on both options.
| What the practice needs | Hiring a dental receptionist | SelenicAI voice receptionist |
|---|---|---|
| Cover | Opening hours only, minus breaks | 24/7, after hours and weekends |
| Fully loaded cost | £30,000–£40,000 per year | A fraction of one salary, predictable monthly retainer, no usage caps |
| Sick days and holiday | Cover gaps, voicemail, locum cost | None, answers every call without a break |
| Simultaneous calls | One line at a time, rest get engaged tone | Every call answered at once, no queue |
| Time to live | Recruit, then train for weeks | Live in 72 hours, founder-led |
| Consistency | Varies by person, mood, and tenure | Same qualifying questions on every call |
| Staff turnover | Seat turns over roughly every 12 weeks | No turnover, no retraining |
| PMS and diary | Manual entry, depends who is on | Books into the diary, syncs to your PMS |
Read the table top to bottom and the pattern is clear. On every line that matters to a private practice, the AI voice receptionist wins, and it wins for less than a fraction of a single salary.
This is not either or
The strongest setup is not a choice between a person and the technology. It is your front desk team handling the human work they are good at, the in person warmth, the complex conversations, the treatment coordinator handover, while every call that would otherwise hit voicemail is answered, qualified, and booked automatically.
Your receptionists stop being measured by a phone they physically cannot always reach. They get a clean diary of properly qualified new patient enquiries to work from. The hiring pressure eases, the locum bills shrink, and the £30,000 to £40,000 you would have spent on a second seat with twelve week turnover stays in the practice.
The cost of getting this wrong
If you do nothing, the bill is not zero. The same missed calls that justify the extra hire are quietly costing a typical private practice between £24,000 and £90,000 per year in lost patient lifetime value, because a new patient is worth £3,000 to £15,000 over their time with you. On top of that, around 30% of your marketing spend hits voicemail and is wasted, so a £5,000 per month budget loses roughly £1,500 every month to calls nobody answered.
You can see the full breakdown of that figure in how much a missed call costs a private dental practice. If you are also weighing a traditional answering service, the comparison in dental answering service versus an AI voice receptionist in 2026 is worth a read before you decide.
SelenicAI was built by founder Moiz Khurram, whose grandfather Dr. Muhammad Saleem Akhter ran Makkah Dental Clinic in Lahore from 1993 to 2018. It was designed for private dental practices specifically, not adapted from a generic call handling tool. You can see exactly how it works before you commit to anything.
Never lose another new patient
The Safety Net™ is a 14-day patient capture programme at zero cost. You keep every record whether you continue or not. Set up in 72 hours, founder-led. A transparent setup fee covers founder-led configuration, and the monthly retainer is predictable with no usage caps.
Before you post the job advert, see what answering every call actually does to your diary. Book a 30-minute call to walk through it on your own numbers, or run your missed-call audit to see what the gap is costing you today.
