Everyday Practices Dental Podcast

Everyday Practices follows Regan Robertson, Sara Hansen as they interview dental professionals about everything related to dental practice ownership from productivity & finances, patient interaction, leadership, and more.

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“Missing one phone call is too many.” – Adrian Lefler

Guest

Adrian Lefler is the CEO and Co-Founder of My Social Practice. With 16 years in dental digital marketing, Adrian has spent his career helping dental practices and their teams improve how they connect with patients, communicate online, and grow through smarter marketing systems.

In this episode, Adrian brings that experience into one of the most important conversations happening in dentistry right now: how practices can use AI to protect missed opportunities, support the front office, and create a better patient experience.

Brief Overview of the Episode

Dental practices spend real money to make the phone ring.

They invest in websites, Google Ads, social media, treatment campaigns, and new patient marketing. But if the call goes unanswered, if the patient reaches voicemail, or if follow-up happens too late, that opportunity may be gone.

Adrian explains why AI reception tools are becoming a practical solution for dental teams that are tired of missing calls, losing leads, and stretching the front office too thin.

The point is not to remove the human side of dentistry. The point is to protect it.

When AI can help with repetitive questions, scheduling, rescheduling, chat, and missed-call capture, the team gets more space to do what humans do best: build trust, serve patients, and create a better in-office experience.

What This Episode Reveals

Most practices are focused on getting more leads.

But a bigger problem may already be sitting inside the practice.

A missed call is not just a missed call. It may be a patient who was ready to schedule, a treatment opportunity that never reached the calendar, or a marketing dollar that ended in voicemail.

This episode reveals why call capture is now part of the growth conversation. Patients expect speed, simplicity, and fewer barriers. When the practice cannot respond quickly, many patients do not wait.

They move on.

What You’ll Learn

• Why missed calls are a bigger problem now than they were five years ago
• How voicemail can quietly turn patient interest into lost opportunity
• Why speed-to-lead matters when a patient is ready to take action
• How AI can support the front office without replacing the team  

If This Sounds Familiar

Your team is helping the patient standing in front of them.

The phone rings.

A new patient is ready to schedule.

No one is available to answer.

By the time your team calls back, that patient may have already found another practice.

This is the reality many practices are living in every day. The front office is not lazy. The team is not uncaring. They are busy, interrupted, and expected to handle more than one person can reasonably manage at once.

That creates a gap between marketing and scheduling.

And that gap costs practices real patients.

Next Steps

Start by looking at what happens after the phone rings.

Review how many calls are missed, how many patients are sent to voicemail, and how quickly new patient inquiries are contacted. Then look at how many of those opportunities turn into scheduled and kept appointments.

From there, evaluate the systems around your front office.

• Can patients get help when your team is unavailable?
• Can scheduling questions be handled without creating more work?
• Can your team see what happened after a missed call?
• Can your practice protect the leads your marketing already created? 

The goal is not more noise.

The goal is fewer missed opportunities and a better patient experience from the first moment someone reaches out.