“Press 1 to book an appointment”

Why the phone menu solves nothing — and what Belgian practices really expect from their phone.

The reflex everyone knows

You call a practice. A recorded voice greets you. Press 1 to book an appointment. Press 2 to cancel. Press 3 to speak to our secretariat.

You press 3. The music starts.

Two minutes. Five minutes. Sometimes more. And at the end of the line, an overworked receptionist who picks up apologising, because she already has three calls on hold and a patient standing at her desk.

Nobody is at fault in that scene. It’s the system that’s outdated.

The phone menu only shifts the problem

A phone menu doesn’t answer calls: it queues them. It sorts roughly, it makes people wait, and it routes everyone to the same person — the one who was already busy.

As a result, three things happen:

• The patient gives up. A large share of callers hang up before speaking to anyone. Maybe they’ll try again later. Often, they call another practice.
• The receptionist is interrupted non-stop. Every ring cuts into whatever she was doing: a file, a patient at the desk, invoicing.
• Calls pile up at the same hours. On Monday morning, the lines are saturated. The rest of the day, they ring into the void.

And for a practitioner working alone, without a secretariat, the situation is even simpler: they’re in consultation. They don’t pick up.

What practices told us

A practitioner in consultation doesn’t interrupt themselves. A receptionist juggling a front desk, a waiting room, files and a phone can’t do everything at once. And meanwhile, patients don’t understand why nobody picks up.

What we built — and what we don’t do

Our assistant answers the phone. Not by filtering, not by putting people on hold: she picks up and she talks, in French, Dutch or English, depending on the patient’s language.

She books the appointment, directly

No “press 1”. The patient explains what they need, she checks the real availability and offers time slots. The appointment is set during the call.

She recognises patients who call back

When someone has called before, she knows. The history is attached to their record: when they called, why, what was done. The conversation resumes with context, instead of starting from scratch every time.

Emergencies go straight to a human

This is the most important point, and it needs to be said clearly: Celya does no medical triage whatsoever. She doesn’t assess the severity of a symptom and makes no clinical decision.

What she does: she applies the criteria the practice itself has defined. If the call falls within those criteria, she transfers it immediately — to the receptionist, to the practitioner, to the number you chose. And the person receiving the call already sees the reason, the summary, the callback number and the urgency level.

Medical judgement stays human. Always.

She relieves the receptionist, she doesn’t replace her

That’s the misunderstanding we want to clear up right away. In a practice with staff, the goal is not to cut a job. It’s to give the receptionist back the time the phone takes from her.

Concretely: she’s no longer interrupted every four minutes. She handles the files, the front desk, the invoicing, the health-insurance paperwork — the work that genuinely needs a person. Routine calls are taken and filed. And what deserves her attention arrives with the context already written down.

In the evening, everything can be reread

Every call is transcribed, summarised and filed. You see who called, for what reason, what was agreed. If any doubt remains about what was said, the exact conversation is right there.

A group practice, several diaries

For practices with several practitioners, the assistant can be configured with each one’s own availability: she checks the right practitioner’s diary before offering a slot, and directs the patient to the right person depending on the reason.

Accessible, including to small practices

A classic telesecretariat bills by coverage hours: the more you want to be covered, the higher the bill. That’s logical — behind it, there are salaries. As a result, many practices give up, or limit themselves to a few hours a day.

We don’t have that constraint. That’s what lets us offer full coverage — day, night, weekend — to practices and independents who could never have afforded it otherwise.

No commitment, and nothing to change in your setup.

What it changes

The patient presses no keys and doesn’t wait. The receptionist is no longer cut off every four minutes. The practitioner no longer has to choose between their patient and their phone.

And above all: nobody falls into the void any more.

Read next

← All articles The phone answering service for medical practices → Missed calls when you work alone →