Existing patient — change a booked appointment
You give the details the appointment is under and either pick a new time from what is genuinely free or cancel it — without ringing the practice at lunchtime.
- Industry
- Dental
- Shape
- Change an existing appointment
- Plan
- Starter and above
Across Dental: Reception work only — scheduling and admin. No clinical questions, no triage.
The situation it is for
The reschedule call is the single most common reason a dental practice's phone rings, and a short-notice gap nobody fills is the most expensive hour in the week.
A patient who already has an appointment wants to move it, cancel it, or book the next stage of treatment they have already been given a plan for. The bot finds the appointment from the name, email and number it is booked under, and either moves it to a time the practice really has free or — after checking it has the right one — cancels it and gives the surgery its hour back. The next stage of a treatment plan still goes to a person.
Who runs it
Dental practices with a diary and patients who move their appointments — which is all of them.
It starts when somebody types
- “move my dental appointment”
- “reschedule my check-up”
- “i need to change my appointment”
- “cancel my dental appointment”
- “book the next part of my treatment”
The conversation
What it asks
4 questions, asked in this order. Every answer is written down for whoever picks the job up.
- 01What you need
“What would you like to do — move it, cancel it, book the next stage of your treatment, or something else?”
Decides which route the conversation takes and which team is named to the customer. Nothing is booked here, so no appointment length is read.
- Move it to another time
- Cancel it
- Book the next stage of my treatment
- Something else about it
- 02Name
“Whose appointment is it?”
What a colleague needs first if the process cannot make the change itself. A parent may be typing on a child's behalf, so the name given is the name the appointment is under.
- 03Phone
“What number is the appointment booked under?”
One half of the match, and the number a colleague calls back on.
- 04Email
“And the email address the practice has for it?”
The other half of the match. Neither half is proof that the appointment belongs to whoever is typing — see the limits below.
Those options are the starting set. The services you configure — and, where a process asks for them, the languages you work in — replace them, and the wording follows.
The rules that run
Checks, not judgement calls. The same answer every time, from your own settings.
- Is this a number that actually dials?
What you need set up
Settings in your own account. Nothing here is guessed on your behalf.
- Your opening hours
- Your timezone
- Your services, their length and their price
Without your hours and timezone there are no times to offer, so the process hands every customer to a person instead of inventing one.
How it can end
The complete list. There is no other ending it can reach.
- Appointment booked
- Appointment cancelled
- Nothing free — handed to a person
- Handed to a person
- Visitor left
- Something went wrong — handed to a person
Available, with a limit
The limits
This process runs, and it stops short of something its name suggests. Here is exactly what, in full.
- The bot never presents itself as a clinician, never gives clinical advice, and never decides what a person needs.
- A confirmation email is sent. No SMS is sent from any process.
- If a visitor volunteers something clinical mid-flow, the turn is classified as an aside and falls through to the normal assistant.
- The 'next stage of my treatment' branch books nothing.
- Identification is not authentication. The match is an email address and a phone number typed into an anonymous widget session.
- A cancellation sends the customer nothing.
- A short-notice cancellation policy is not enforced and not even mentioned.
- It moves or cancels one appointment — the one that matched.
And what is not in the product at all
Not a setting you have missed, and not on a list of things arriving shortly.
- A name, phone number and email typed into a chat are not proof that the appointment belongs to whoever is typing. Nobody signs in, so the change is made on the details given.
More for dental
Built on the same engine and the same settings — change an existing appointment is one of 6 shapes the whole catalogue is made from.
- DENTAL-01Available now
New patient appointment
Dental
You register and get an appointment in one conversation, at a time the practice really has, and a chatbot asks you nothing about your teeth.
- DENTAL-03Available, with a limit
Treatment, cost and plan enquiries
Dental
You get a straight answer about who is picking your question up and that they have your details, in one exchange — rather than a booking form for a consultation you have not decided to have, or a figure guessed at you by a chatbot.
Run this one on your own hours, services and postcodes.
Starter and above. Your settings decide the wording, the durations, the prices and the times it offers — nothing on this page is a template you have to accept as written.