WhatsApp, 21:40 on a Sunday. Do you treat sciatica, do you take my insurance, how much is a first appointment, is there parking. Those four make up most of what comes in outside hours, and none of them need a clinician.
The answers come from a document you write once. Twenty to forty questions in your own words, the way you say them at reception. Yes, sciatica is treated here, the first appointment is forty-five minutes, parking is on the side street after 18:30 and behind the supermarket at weekends. The system answers from that document and from nothing else. If a question is not covered, it says so and takes a name and number for the morning.
It sits on your website as a small chat box and on your WhatsApp number. Same answers, same tone. Insurance questions check your actual list of insurers. Price questions give the price you put in. Where the answer is book an appointment, the booking link is right there in the reply.
The line that matters is the clinical one. I have had a headache for three days and my neck is stiff, should I come in. The system does not answer that. It says a practitioner will read this, sends the message to you with the number, and tells the patient when to expect a call.
Same for anything about medication, anything about a child, anything with the word pain in it that is not plainly a booking question. The tolerance for getting that wrong is zero, so the rule is wide.
You can read every conversation. Once a week it lists the questions it could not answer, so you add them to the document. After a month the list is short.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts, your WhatsApp number, your website. What did your last three out-of-hours messages ask?