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An AI receptionist answers your clinic's calls, speaks with patients naturally, and — if it's any good — books, reschedules and cancels appointments directly in your practice management system. Get the choice right and every call is answered for a fraction of reception wages. Get it wrong and you'll spend your savings cleaning up mis-bookings and chasing voicemails.
Yes, we're a vendor (Aeva). But every criterion below is vendor-neutral and independently verifiable — apply them to us just as hard as to everyone else.
The six things that actually matter
Voice quality gets the demos, but these six decide whether an AI receptionist works in a real clinic month after month.
1. Native, real-time PMS integration
The AI must read your live diary and write bookings straight into your PMS (Cliniko, Splose, etc.). Anything less turns every call into manual admin for your team.
2. Real booking depth
Answering and booking is table stakes — month two is decided by the details. Can it handle several actions in one call, families sharing a phone number, group classes, practitioner-specific rules and appointment types with different durations? Demand a live demonstration of each.
3. A receptionist that learns
Unknown questions should become suggested answers you approve once — not repeated dead ends. If it can't build its knowledge from your website and get smarter every week, you're buying month one forever.
4. Revenue protection built in
The best systems don't just answer: they convert cancellations into reschedules, text abandoned callers your booking link, collect deposits to cut no-shows, and answer dozens of simultaneous calls so rush hour never hits voicemail.
5. Reliability, compliance & safety
A cloud-hosted number that keeps answering when your internet or phone system fails; recordings stored in the right jurisdiction under the right privacy laws; emergencies redirected to 000/111/999 immediately — never triaged by an AI.
6. Honest terms & verifiable proof
No lock-in contracts, no setup fees, go-live in days not weeks — and named, on-camera reviews from real clinics plus a live demo you can call before you commit.
How to read vendor claims
Every AI receptionist website makes these claims. Here's what each one actually tells you — and what to check.
| The claim | What to verify |
|---|---|
| “Integrates with your PMS” | Integration depth varies enormously. Ask: is it API-based and real-time? Does it read live availability and write bookings directly into the diary? Email hand-offs, calendar syncs and human-in-the-loop workflows all get marketed as “integration” — they create admin instead of removing it. |
| “Officially recognised” / “partner” | Check the practice management system's own connected-apps directory. Every approved app appears there — a directory listing is a great baseline signal, but it isn't a certification of quality, and no major PMS currently ranks or endorses one AI receptionist over another. |
| “Built from scratch” / “proprietary platform” | Proprietary isn't automatically better — modern software builds on proven infrastructure (payments on Stripe, telephony on Twilio, hosting on AWS). Ask what the platform actually runs on, whether the vendor holds its own enterprise agreements and keys, and what the uptime track record is. Unproven in-house infrastructure can be the bigger risk. |
| “Enterprise-grade security” | Ask where recordings and transcripts are physically stored, which privacy regimes apply (Australian Privacy Principles, NZ Privacy Act, GDPR), what's retained, and what the deletion policy is when you leave — a concrete timeframe, in writing. |
| “Deployed in weeks” / “white-glove project” | The architecture tells you the truth. An API-key integration plus a five-minute call forward goes live in days. Multi-week deployment projects usually mean bespoke, manually-built flows — which also means slower changes and higher costs later. |
| “Patients love it” | Ask for named, verifiable reviews from real clinics, listen to real call recordings, and call the vendor's live demo yourself before committing. If you can't hear it handle a booking end-to-end, keep looking. |
Ten questions to ask every vendor
Send these before any demo — the answers (and how quickly they come) tell you most of what you need to know.
- Is your PMS integration API-based and real-time — and can I watch it book into my own diary during the demo?
- What happens to my callers if my clinic's internet or phone system goes down?
- What happens on a call if the connection to my PMS is briefly unavailable?
- Where are call recordings and transcripts physically stored, and under which privacy laws?
- What happens to my data if I cancel — and how quickly is it deleted?
- How does the AI handle a caller describing a medical emergency?
- What does the AI do when it doesn't know an answer?
- Is there a lock-in contract, setup fee or cancellation fee?
- How long from signup to answering live calls — and what do I have to do?
- Can I hear real call recordings and speak to reference clinics like mine?
Where Aeva stands
Held against the same six criteria — here's our answer sheet, all of it independently checkable.
1. Native PMS integration
Aeva integrates with Cliniko and Splose through their official APIs — live availability, direct booking, patient recognition — and is listed on Cliniko's Connected Apps directory. PracSuite and many more coming soon.
2. Real booking depth
Up to five actions in one call — bookings, cancellations and reschedules for new patients, existing patients or whole families on one number. Group classes, practitioner-specific rules and duration-aware availability are all built in, no custom work.
3. A receptionist that learns
Unknown questions become suggested FAQs your clinic approves once — answered confidently forever after. Aeva auto-builds its knowledge base from your website (up to 300 Q&As), and new features ship weekly.
4. Revenue protection built in
Smart cancellation-to-reschedule conversion, automatic booking-rescue SMS when callers hang up mid-booking, deposit collection to cut no-shows, and ~50 concurrent calls so rush hour never hits voicemail.
5. Reliability, compliance & safety
A dedicated cloud number on Twilio's carrier network — your internet and phone hardware are irrelevant. Recordings stored on Australian servers under GDPR/APP/NZ compliance, deleted within 60 days if you leave, and emergency callers immediately directed to 000/111/999.
6. Honest terms & verifiable proof
No lock-in, no setup fees, cancel anytime — existing clients even kept their pricing through the December 2025 increase. And the proof is public: 2,100+ practitioners, 210,000+ calls, 26,000+ bookings, named on-camera reviews, and a live demo on our homepage.
Why clinics switch to Aeva
The short version of everything above — what you get with Aeva that you won't get elsewhere.
- Purpose-built for AI phone answering in clinics — 100% of our engineering goes into the patient phone experience, nothing else
- The deepest PMS integration on the market: live availability, direct booking, returning-patient recognition and deposits inside Cliniko and Splose
- Trusted by more practitioners (2,100+) than any other AI receptionist built for allied health
- The most in-depth scripting and customisation, so Aeva sounds like your clinic — not a generic bot
- The easiest setup in the category: AI-assisted and self-guided, most of the work done for you, live in under an hour
- New features shipped weekly, shaped by feedback from hundreds of clinics
- Fast, personal support — direct access to the founders on every plan
- A public wall of named, on-camera reviews from real clinic owners — not anonymous star ratings
Want to see if Aeva's a good fit for your clinic?
- Allied health clinics on Cliniko or Splose that want calls booked straight into the calendar
- Every size — solo practitioners to 28+ location groups
- Clinics that want every call answered — and lapsed patients called back to rebook
- Owners who want every caller answered 24/7 — nights, weekends, holidays
- Practices not on Cliniko or Splose (more PMS integrations coming soon)
- GP clinics on Best Practice or Medical Director
- Clinics where callers must only ever reach a human
