Microdent Dental SPA · Bologna20 days closed for the holidays. Not one call missed.
Microdent is the practice of Dr. Simone Stori, co-founder of DACOS. We started here for the simplest reason there is: before asking a colleague to hand their phone to an agent, we wanted to see what happened when we handed over our own.
At a glance
- Client
- Microdent Dental SPA
- City
- Bologna
- Practice management software
- OrisLine
- Period analysed
- 1–24 August 2026 (practice closed for holidays)
- Operating days
- 20
- Active agents
- Inbound voice, WhatsApp
- Outcome
- 174 calls handled, 52 appointments booked, €19,315 in treatment plans
The context
A closed practice, a phone that keeps ringing
Microdent Dental SPA is a dental practice in Bologna led by Dr. Simone Stori — dentist, speaker and author, among the first in Italy to bring artificial intelligence into the day-to-day running of a practice.
In August the practice closed for the holidays, as most Italian practices do. For twenty days there was nobody on site.
The loss nobody measures
When a practice closes, the phone does not stop ringing. There is simply nobody to answer it.
And those calls exist nowhere. They never reach the calendar, never reach the practice management software, never appear in any year-end report. They are patients who tried to reach you while you were closed, found nobody, and in most cases called somewhere else.
It is an invisible loss: you cannot see it precisely because it is never recorded.
We left the agent running, on its own, for all twenty days. And we measured everything.
What happened
174 calls received. 174 answered. None missed.
Across 20 operating days, 174 calls came in from 118 different people. Of those, 142 became real conversations.
- Calls received
- 174
- Calls unanswered
- 0
- Distinct callers
- 118
- Real conversations
- 142
- Time spent in conversation
- 5.1 hours
- Agent–patient exchanges
- 1,581
- Average conversation length
- 1 minute 58 seconds
The average duration is the figure that matters most. Two minutes of conversation means patients genuinely talk to the agent: they do not hang up after three seconds, they explain the problem, ask questions, and accept a proposed appointment.
How much it handled alone
76% of calls were resolved entirely by the agent, with no staff involvement at all.
- 76%
- resolved by the agent
- 24%
- passed to a person
The remaining 24% was passed to a person. Which is exactly how it should work: the agent does not make calls that are not its to make. It knows how far it can go, and when it has to stop.
The result in the calendar
52 appointments across 36 patients, read straight from the practice software
- Appointments created
- 52
- Patients involved
- 36
- Already carried out
- 30
- Still scheduled
- 18
- Cancelled
- 4
All of them dated after 24 August — after reopening. These are 52 appointments that, with the agent switched off, almost certainly would never have been booked: there was nobody at the practice to take them.
How urgent calls were handled
33 of the calls were urgent. People in pain, in August, with the practice closed.
Before leaving the agent on its own we defined a precise protocol for urgent cases, because that is the part you cannot improvise: a direct transfer to the dentist for urgent cases, and a referral dentist for those to be directed elsewhere.
- Urgent calls
- 33
- Transferred to a person
- 19 (58%)
- Handled with information
- 11
- Directed to the referral dentist
- 2
- Booked
- 1
This is the figure we believe is worth more than all the others put together. Not because it generated revenue — it generated almost none. But because in those calls there was a person with a real problem who, instead of finding emptiness, found somebody.
An agent that knows when to stop being an agent is the hard part to build.
From appointments to treatment plans
14 treatment plans, €19,315 put on the table
Here the story continues after reopening.
- Appointments already carried out
- 30
- Treatment plans generated
- 14
- Of which first visits
- 6
- Plans refused
- 0
- Quoted value
- €19,315
Quoted value, not collected revenue. Conversion is still under way.
Of those 52 appointments, 30 have already taken place. Those visits produced 14 treatment plans, worth €19,315 in total. Six were first visits. None was refused.
The other 18 appointments are still scheduled, so the figure is not final: it is what we have so far.
One necessary clarification, because this is where many vendors cheat: that is quoted value, not collected revenue. Conversion is still under way, as it is for any treatment plan presented recently.
So the honest number is this: €19,315 of treatment plans put on the table, born from appointments that would not have existed without the agent. How much becomes revenue, time will tell — exactly as it would for a plan presented by a person.
How we measured
No estimates, no projections
Every number on this page is read directly from the practice's own management software and from the conversation logs.
The appointments are the ones actually in the calendar, with their real status: carried out, scheduled, cancelled. The treatment plans are the ones recorded in the practice software. Calls are tracked one by one, with transcripts and recordings available.
Where a figure is estimated or partial, we say so.
What this means for your practice
Microdent was closed in August. But it was not unreachable.
This is not a story about artificial intelligence. It is a story about what happens to a practice's phone when there is nobody to answer it, and how much of what is lost is never even counted.
The holidays are just the extreme case. The same thing happens every day on a smaller scale: during meetings, at call peaks, while the receptionist is with a patient at the desk, in the evening, on Saturdays, on Sundays.
Let's talk
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