The same five questions before booking: who answers them at your clinic

It's ten in the morning and the front desk phone is ringing at the same time the website chat lights up and a new message lands on the clinic's WhatsApp. Three channels, the same question: "how much is a check-up?", "how long does the session take?", "is there parking nearby?", "do you take my insurance?". Whoever is on the desk answers the same thing for the fifth time that hour, while the patient standing in front of them waits their turn. And the one who asked by chat at nine and got no answer until half past twelve has already booked somewhere else by then.

These aren't odd or highly specific questions — they're almost always the same five, whether it's a patient of a dental clinic, an aesthetics centre or a physiotherapy practice: price, duration, location and parking, whether you take their insurer, and whether they need to prepare anything before the first visit. Nobody reads a full treatment catalogue on your website to find the answer; they type the question and expect an answer, not a "we'll confirm by email".

Have those five questions answered instantly, not by whoever's on the desk

With the ChatME assistant trained on your treatment list and prices, those questions get answered on their own, instantly, right inside your website's chat: what a visit includes, how long it takes, whether anything needs preparing beforehand, and the actual price range you've entered — not a generic estimate. If a patient asks whether you take their insurer, the assistant answers from the list you gave it; if it isn't on that list, it says so instead of inventing an answer someone then has to walk back over the phone.

All of that lives in your knowledge base: you upload your treatment list, prices, the insurers you work with and what to prepare before each visit, and the assistant answers from that — on your website and, if you also connect WhatsApp or Instagram, on those channels too with the same brain, without configuring anything twice. It's the same care you already put into the consultation room: the information it gives is exactly what you've reviewed, not something a generic bot made up to avoid going quiet.

And when the patient is ready to book, the appointment is real

When the conversation moves from "how much does it cost" to "I'd like to book", the assistant doesn't just jot down a message for someone to check later. With Google Calendar bookings turned on, it checks your real opening hours and your calendar at that exact moment, and if the slot is free, the appointment is created and confirmed right there, inside the chat. If that slot is already taken or falls outside your hours, the assistant says so and asks for another time — it never promises a slot that doesn't exist or says "we'll confirm later" so someone can sort it out by hand.

This works the same whether it's a new patient booking a first visit or a regular one booking a check-up, and it avoids double-booking: if you add something to the calendar by hand yourself, the assistant respects it on the very next conversation without you having to tell it.

Anything clinical stays with the professional

There's a line the assistant never crosses, and it's the most important one on this list: it doesn't diagnose or assess symptoms. It explains treatments, prices, duration and availability — all of it information about the practice, never clinical judgement. The moment a question asks for a clinical opinion ("is this serious?", "is this treatment right for me?"), the assistant says so plainly and points the patient to discuss it with the professional, rather than guessing.

For those cases, or for any question you'd rather your own team picked up in person, you can turn on a form in your dashboard with the keywords your patients tend to use — "speak to the doctor", "medical question", "custom quote". When those appear in the chat, the assistant collects the details you ask for and emails them to you; the full conversation stays logged in your dashboard, under Conversations, so you can pick it up with the full context.

The honest limits

The assistant doesn't replace your clinical team, and there's no live handoff to a person inside the chat itself. It doesn't verify a patient's exact insurance coverage in real time or negotiate with the insurer: it says what you've told it you cover or don't, and points the patient to confirm details with their insurer if needed. And as with any health-related data, your patients are covered by the same compliance you already work under: data hosted in the EU, no data sold, and a signable DPA from your dashboard if your practice needs one.

Which plan you need

Answering these questions from your knowledge base works on every plan, including the free one. For the assistant to also book real appointments against your Google Calendar, you need the Basic plan or above; if you also want it to answer on WhatsApp Business or Instagram with the same brain, that's on the Pro and E-commerce plans (see all plans).

If you want to see the rest of what the assistant does for dental clinics, aesthetics centres and physiotherapy practices — from how it trains on your own catalogue to other real cases — there's more in use cases for health and clinics, or write to us directly at info@chatme.es.

*Availability may vary by country.*