Dental Answering Service | New Patient Calls and After-Hours Cover
Dental Practices
The most valuable call a dental practice receives is a new patient who found you twenty minutes ago and has two more practices open in other tabs. It arrives between nine and four, which is precisely when the front desk is turning over an operatory, running a payment, or standing chairside with a suction tip — and the practice that picks up is very often the practice that gets the patient, because the caller is not going to leave three voicemails.
Global Empire Corporation answers dental lines during the day and after hours: new patient calls captured and booked before the caller moves on, cancellations backfilled from your short-notice list, and evening and weekend pain and trauma calls sorted against a protocol your dentists approve and routed to whoever is on call.
- New patient calls answered live during clinic hours, with reason for visit, referral source and insurance captured before the caller tries the next practice
- Short-notice and ASAP list worked when a hygiene appointment cancels, so the chair does not sit empty on Monday
- After-hours pain and trauma calls sorted against your written protocol and routed to the dentist on call
- Existing patients confirmed, rescheduled and reappointed without pulling anyone off the floor
- 1.1B+
- Transactions Processed
- 11+
- Contact Centers Worldwide
- 27
- Service in 27+ Languages
- 35.5k+
- Over 35000 Happy Employees
- 10M+
- New Customers Acquired
An Empty Chair and a New Patient Who Called Somebody Else
Dental practices lose money on the phone in two directions at once, and most only watch one of them. The first is the new patient call that rings out at eleven on a Tuesday. That caller is comparison shopping right now, with your competitor's number already on the screen, and a callback three hours later reaches somebody who has already booked. This is not an after-hours problem — it is a busiest-hour problem, which is why buying evening cover alone often fixes the wrong half.
The second is the chair itself. A hygiene patient cancels Friday at four, and unless somebody works the short-notice list before the office closes, Monday morning has a hole in it that cannot be recovered — an unsold hour of clinical time, gone. Then there is the genuine emergency: pain that has escalated, a crown off before a wedding, a tooth knocked out at a Saturday game. Those need a routing decision quickly, from someone who knows your on-call rotation and your protocol.
For general practices, specialists, and multi-location groups
How a Dental Call Is Handled, Call Type by Call Type
New Patient Intake and Booking
The call the whole program pays for. Reason for visit, how they found you, insurance carrier and subscriber detail, when they were last seen — captured and turned into an appointment before the call ends, not a promise that somebody will ring back.
Dental Emergency Sorting
Your protocol, not the agent's judgment: avulsed or displaced teeth, uncontrolled bleeding, facial swelling, trauma after an accident — routed tonight. A lost filling, a debonded temporary or cold sensitivity — booked for the morning. Agents classify and route; they never diagnose.
On-Call Dentist Escalation
The rotation, your rule for what warrants a call after hours, and the interim instruction the patient is given — delivered in your words, verbatim, because a well-meant agent improvising first aid advice is a liability your practice inherits.
Cancellation Backfill and Recall
Working the ASAP list when a slot opens, returning recall and reappointment calls for patients who left unscheduled, and confirming tomorrow's book — the unglamorous work that keeps hygiene production where it should be.
Insurance Questions, to a Boundary
Agents capture carrier, plan and subscriber detail and confirm whether you participate where you have given them the answer. Anything about benefits, estimates, remaining maximum or what a treatment will be covered at goes to your treatment coordinator, never quoted on the phone.
Post-Operative Calls
Bleeding after an extraction, a dry socket, a temporary crown that came off, pain after endodontic treatment. Agents capture the procedure and the date it was done, then route to the treating dentist rather than offering any reassurance about what is normal.
Working Inside Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental and the Cloud Systems
Dental is the most consolidated of these trades on software, which makes the integration conversation shorter and more honest than in most. Dentrix and Eaglesoft between them run a large share of North American practices, Open Dental is where independents who want control tend to land, and Dentrix Ascend and Curve Dental are the cloud platforms groups standardize on when they grow past one location. The practical dividing line is hosting: cloud systems can be reached with a scoped login and written into directly, while on-premise Dentrix and Eaglesoft installs mean either hosted access into your practice server or structured intake your front desk enters at open.
Whichever path applies, the rule is one schedule. Booking into a parallel calendar and reconciling it in the morning produces double bookings on exactly the appointments you cared most about — the new patient and the emergency — which is worse than the missed calls you were trying to fix. Where direct write access is not available we agree per call type what is booked through hosted access, what is captured as structured intake, and what is simply logged, and the morning report lists every after-hours contact with its disposition.
- Dentrix and Eaglesoft — hosted access to your practice server or structured intake delivery, depending on how your IT is set up
- Open Dental, Dentrix Ascend and Curve Dental — direct scheduling into the live book with a login you scope and can revoke
- One schedule only, never a parallel calendar — a double-booked Monday operatory costs more than the calls it saved
- Morning report of every after-hours contact: caller, classification, disposition, and exactly what the patient was told
Dental Practices Are Covered Entities, and So Is Whoever Answers the Phone
A dental practice is a covered entity under HIPAA and its records are protected health information, so a service taking messages about a patient's treatment is a business associate and needs a signed business associate agreement in place before it answers the first call. The same Privacy and Security Rule safeguards apply — access control, workforce training, audit logging, breach notification — and enforcement sits with the HHS Office for Civil Rights. The dental-specific pressure point is the question callers ask most: what will this cost and does my plan cover it. Answering that involves both the patient's information and a statement about treatment nobody has planned yet, which is why it is a routed call rather than an answered one.
Layered on top of the federal floor, state dental boards set rules on who may discuss diagnosis and treatment with a patient, and a non-clinical agent is not that person under any of them. Scripts define exactly what agents may say, and everything outside those lines is routed to your team. Requirements differ by state and change over time — confirm your current obligations with your own counsel before the protocol is approved.
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Frequently asked questions
Do we need after-hours answering, or better daytime coverage?
For most general practices, daytime. The call that costs you the most is the new patient ringing at eleven on a weekday while the front desk is chairside, not the toothache on Saturday night — and practices routinely buy after-hours cover, feel organized, and keep losing the same weekday calls. Pull a month of call data from your phone system and look at abandoned calls by hour before you buy anything. If the peak sits inside clinic hours, start with daytime overflow and add evenings later.
Can an answering service book new patients directly in Dentrix or Open Dental?
In Open Dental, Dentrix Ascend and Curve Dental, generally yes — they are reachable with a login you scope and revoke, so an agent can put the appointment into the live book. On-premise Dentrix and Eaglesoft depend on how your server is hosted and what your IT will permit; where remote access is not safe or available, the honest arrangement is structured intake your front desk enters at open. What nobody should agree to is a second calendar kept by the answering service, because the reconciliation always slips on the busiest morning of the week.
How do you decide what counts as a dental emergency?
You define it and we follow it. The protocol your dentists sign lists what is routed tonight — an avulsed or displaced tooth, uncontrolled bleeding, facial swelling, trauma from an accident — and what is booked in the morning, such as a lost filling, a debonded temporary or sensitivity. Agents match the caller's description to the list and route accordingly. Anything the list does not cover escalates rather than waiting, because a caller in pain who was quietly filed under Monday is the complaint that arrives as a review.
Will your agents quote insurance coverage to a patient?
No. Agents capture the carrier, plan and subscriber detail, and confirm whether you participate with a given plan when you have given them that answer in writing. Anything about benefits, remaining annual maximum, frequency limitations or what a specific treatment will be covered at goes to your treatment coordinator. A quoted number that turns out to be wrong becomes an argument at the front desk and sometimes a refund, and it is not a risk worth taking to save one transfer.
Can you fill cancellations from our short-notice list?
Yes, and for hygiene-heavy schedules it is often the part that pays for the program. When a slot opens we work your ASAP list in the order you set, calling patients who asked to come in sooner, and book the first who can take it directly into the schedule. The constraints are yours: which providers and appointment types may be filled that way, how far ahead, and whether a specific patient should be offered a longer appointment instead of dropped into whatever opened up.
Do you sign a business associate agreement?
Yes, and it is signed before any call is answered, not after go-live. Your practice is a covered entity, the messages we take are protected health information, and an answering service handling them is a business associate under HIPAA. Beyond the signature, ask for the things a BAA alone does not tell you: which subcontractors touch the data, where messages are stored and for how long, how agent access is revoked on their last day, and what the breach notification path back to you looks like in practice.
Can you cover several locations in a group?
Yes, and it usually works better than covering one. A shared team absorbs each location's peaks against the others' quiet stretches, which is the elasticity a single practice cannot build on its own, and it lets a caller who reaches the wrong office be booked at the right one instead of transferred and lost. Each location keeps its own greeting, its own providers, its own on-call rotation and its own reporting, so the group sees a per-location view rather than one blended number that hides a weak site.
What does a dental answering service cost?
It is scoped rather than rated. Which hours are covered and whether daytime overflow is included, call volume in those windows, how many locations and providers share the line, whether agents schedule directly in your practice software or deliver structured intake, whether cancellation backfill and recall calling are in scope, and the security and logging your compliance requirements call for. A single-location practice buying weekday overflow is a different build from a five-site group covering nights and weekends. We scope against your call data and quote per practice.
TESTIMONIALS
Our trusted clients
Global Empire provides reliable 24/7 coverage with live support when it matters most. Their breadth of service, professionalism, and ability to answer calls quickly has made a major difference for our organization. We’re very happy with the partnership and would recommend them confidently.
Wait times no longer exist with the service Global Empire provides. We have cut labor costs dramatically, eliminated overhead from dispatch staffing, and our clients are getting picked up quicker. Spending less while improving service has become the backbone of our business.
We are not only meeting but exceeding our service level objectives. Global Empire resolves many calls without needing a live agent, and the calls that require support are answered quickly and handled faster than before. Their reporting gives us visibility anytime we need it.
We set very challenging service level objectives and insist on those standards being met. At first we were unsure if Global Empire could consistently deliver at that level, but they proved they could. Based on performance and reliability, we know we made the right decision.
Service matters greatly for customer loyalty and experience, and Global Empire provides exactly the professional support required. We’re confident we achieve more value in our contact center because of the strategic partnership and the consistency of their service.
During our recent flood disaster, Global Empire provided messaging services vital to our communications management. Their quick, efficient, and professional response stood out throughout the crisis. In situations like this, service quality is not taken for granted — it’s recognized.
Excellent service — we consistently receive comments about how professional and friendly their agents are. To our customers, it feels seamless and they assume the people answering are part of our in-office team. It has worked out far better than we thought possible.
Global Empire has provided essential call center services for over a decade, responding to medical and non-medical emergencies with accuracy and professionalism. Their commitment to quality and continuous learning is clearly reflected in the service they deliver.
I never realized how much overtime we were paying until we started using Global Empire. We were able to eliminate overtime completely while improving how calls are handled. Now our staff can focus on other important tasks that keep our customers happy.
I wasn’t using all the options Global Empire offered until one of their representatives noticed and reached out. Based on their recommendations, we made several changes that saved money and improved response time. Customers now comment on how efficiently our business runs.
We believe excellent customer service provides the sharpest competitive edge. Global Empire shares that same vision and works closely with us to deliver the best possible service quality. Their partnership supports our ongoing commitment to excellence.
The main reason we work with Global Empire is the ‘red carpet’ treatment. They have the best group of agents I’ve worked with in over 20 years, and they consistently maintain high standards for compliance and customer interactions. They lead by example.
Efficient, professional service with a personal touch. It’s rare to find a provider that consistently delivers both quality and responsiveness at this level.
Over the years I’ve been impressed with the professionally trained staff at Global Empire. Our customers are often anxious or angry, and their team consistently puts them at ease. In two decades, we have never had a customer complaint — which says everything.
As we expanded from Europe into North America, we knew customer service and technical support would be critical to success. We were impressed to learn Global Empire was handling support for a market leader. After working with them, it’s clear why — their service sets the standard.
One of our members struggled with registration and called our toll-free number. The Global Empire agent remained calm, extremely helpful, and professional throughout a long troubleshooting process. Because of that call, the customer remained loyal — and that is a huge asset.
Global Empire is over-delivering on SPH and sales targets. Their performance has helped us reduce acquisition costs significantly, and they have proven to be the missing link in our growth strategy.
I can’t believe we didn’t use Global Empire sooner. Since joining, our order accuracy improved, wait time is virtually gone, and customers receive their orders correctly and on time. This partnership has had a major impact on our national pizza business.
Because of their experience in the energy industry, Global Empire has become a valued marketing partner. Their call center solutions help us acquire customers, retain them, and provide quality service after the sale — 24 hours a day.
Our business relationship with Global Empire has been long and very satisfying. Their employees deserve full credit for the professionalism and consistency they bring to every interaction. I know firsthand how stressful frontline work can be, and their team delivers every time.
Global Empire has been an integral part of our business for years. Our customers expect to speak with someone who can assist immediately, and their team consistently delivers. They maintain professionalism, empathy, and flexibility, making it easy to work together.
With so much outsourcing in the answering services space, it was a relief to find a provider that is truly efficient. The pricing is excellent, onboarding was smooth, and our clients were far happier speaking to a live operator instead of voicemail.
We have partnered with Global Empire for over 15 years and they remain a crucial part of our 24/7 operations. They support multiple sites across states, and we couldn’t be happier with their service, reliability, and long-term consistency.