Dr. John Meis
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis here with my partner, the amazing Wendy Briggs. Hey Wendy, how you doing?
Wendy Briggs
I'm doing great. I'm excited about today's podcast. This is going to be great.
Dr. John Meis
I am too. So this is another in our series of AI and how it's impacting practices. What's real, what's not real, what's useful, what's ready now and what's coming. So I'm so excited to have Richard and Quin on today, be from Mango. And you guys have just released a new AI tool and I want to hear all about it.
Richard May
Yeah, Dr. John Wendy, thanks for having me and Quin on here, We are really excited about our AI products and yeah, we're excited to talk about it too. As everyone knows, or maybe if you don't, Mango Voice is a primarily phone company. offer voice over IP phone services to dental practices because of, I mean, everyone talks about us for our really great support, our really great products, really smooth onboarding, integrations, but now, buzz is all about AI. you don't have AI, you're probably, you feel like you're in the Stone Age almost, especially in dentistry. But, you know, for us, AI was something that we wanted to be really careful with because, you know, there's so much of it out there and I like how you worded that. What's useful, what's sticking, what are people actually able to apply? We weren't as concerned about being first to the AI race, but we definitely wanted to be the best.
So we listened to our customers and still ask them what do you guys actually want AI to do around the phone, specifically in your practice. And the two things that we have that have really impacted dental practice in the biggest way is, first of all, we take the phone calls, the conversations, and we analyze them. We give you a nice summary of those calls, tell you, you some feedback on it, tell you where you missed, where you could have done better.
But what's really unique that no one else is doing is we're taking that summary and logging it into your practice management software into the notes section. So this is making sure that you don't ever miss notes again. It's making sure that you don't have to take notes on phone calls. And Wendy, you know this probably as a coach, you know this better than anyone. It's standardizing the notes. So like the way I take notes is terrible. The way Quin takes notes is really good, And we don't see this hodgepodge of different people taking notes all over the place. It's actually standardizing everything and conforming your practice. And also making sure that it's all completely HIPAA compliant, which sometimes note takers are not doing that, or you'd have an inexperienced person who's taking things they shouldn't be taking. And then, you know, we can dive back into these conversations about this. And the second thing is the biggest thing and probably the hottest commodity right now is Margo, our AI voice assistant, that ensures you never miss a call again. And this is like the biggest problem to solve in dentistry is how do I make sure I don't miss calls and miss opportunities? We have an AI voice assistant that takes calls, answers calls, and makes sure that you're not missing opportunities and that people are going elsewhere. You know, they're just calling the dentist across the street. Instead, you're picking up those conversations.
Margo's great! She is the employee that is as pleasant at 8 a.m. as she is at 5 p.m. She doesn't ditch out at 4.58 and not take that call and walk away and say, I'll let it go to voicemail. She doesn't take off holidays or call in sick or anything like that. She's always very nice. And she follows the prompts that you give her. So if there's specific information and Wendy, I know you coach on this, that you need to pick up on the phone conversation, you know, their name, best time for an appointment, what insurance they have. She will not end the conversation until she gets that information and logs that for you. We're in practices all across the country right now. We've had a lot of people really love what we're doing and it's really exciting time for Mango right now. So yeah, I've been talking for a second. So questions or like thoughts around that and then we can go back and forth.
Dr. John Meis
Well, first thought is anything that we can do to improve phones is worth doing. It is such a constraint in most offices. Most offices don't have any idea how poorly they're doing at answering the phone. They don't measure it. They don't know how well they're converting those calls to appointments. And it's such a big lever if you can get that fixed. And if call volume were level throughout the day, throughout the week, then it would just be a matter of having the right number of people, right? But it's not, you know, the call volume on, I think probably typically late Monday morning is probably the heaviest. I don't know if that's what your stuff shows, but so, you know, having, quote unquote, another voice to answer the phone is, it can't help but help your patient flow. It just can't help but do that.
Wendy Briggs
John, I want to comment on one thing you said too. You said you could have the right number of people, but Richard nailed it. We've seen this for years. Not all of the people answering the phone do it well. Not all of the people answering the phone actually understand that the point of the phone call is to convert that caller into an appointment. We might be pleasant on the phone, we might be answering all the questions, but if we don't have a pathway to conversion into an appointment, we're still missing those opportunities even if we did have somebody answer the phone. What I love about this option for practices is that you're able to hire somebody who already has the skillsets essentially wired in. And I love that you mentioned that you have some capability for that to be customized because even the best well-intentioned people, like you mentioned, are on their A game all the time. They may not be present to pick up the phone. And even when they do it, they may not be converting at the rate that we'd like to see, in order to really capitalize on all of those marketing dollars and all the effort that we're making to get that phone ring.
Richard May
Yeah. And, know, there's so much built into this, you know, it's hard to summarize it all in one moment, like in one podcast, but, you know, inside of Mango in this AI tool, one thing that I really like that I use a lot is we have this ability to search for keywords too. So if there's specific phrases or terminology you want your team using on those calls, or that you don't want them using that they use, they use too often, you can search for those, terminology and it will pull up every call, And you can filter it by time too. So in the last year, the last month, the last day, whatever you want to do, however it suits your practice and identify those calls and then say, because to your point, Wendy and Dr. John, do you have so many calls? How do know which ones to go listen to? Like how do you know, okay, these are the ones we need to actually get training on. Well, we've filtered that down so you can customize, okay, I need to see these seven or eight calls. We listen to them, we get some feedback, We make ourselves all better. And it improves everyone all around. And not just your practice, but it improves the patient experience too. You know, cause yeah, maybe you got conversion, but did you just upset them cause you were a hard seller and they leave you a bad review, you know? So it's making everyone happier about the entire experience.
Quin Briggs
Touching on that too, Rich, can filter with this AI, you can filter between new patient and existing patient calls as well. So it's really, really helpful as you're reviewing, you can kind of review the specific new patient phone calls, see how those are going, make sure that you have that pathway to conversion like you're talking about and make sure that you guys are kind of going down that pathway and that that's how those calls are being handled specifically with the new patients.
Wendy Briggs
Yeah, I think that's something really important to note. You know, we expect our team to know how to handle those calls differently, right? Whether they're a new patient or returning patient. I'm assuming Margo's built in to do that as well. I believe I saw a video, Rich, of you on social media where you're talking and you're asking all the questions of Margo. And I was impressed with how they did. And I'm curious, this could be fun, right? Quin, Dr. John at the next retreat, we can set up
of Margot versus your people. Now, I'm not suggesting we actually do that...
Dr. John Meis
It'd be fun! Haha!
Wendy Briggs
In the past, we've been a part of meetings where they've actually live called somebody from the audience and checked, how did they actually answer the phone? And people are either delighted, but more often than not mortified what's actually happening when we're, when we're screening those things. you know, that could be a take on that.
Dr. John Meis
Yes.
Richard May
Yeah.
No, that is fun. I mean, it's funny because I've actually been at different conferences and been speaking on stage and I've called, you know, Margo in front of people and been a little bit terrified myself, but I've been impressed because we've actually had other people come from the stands, ask her questions. And someone really threw a curve ball at us the other day where they said, they went through the entire thing, said, okay, I'm good to go. And then at the very end, Margo asked, is there anything else we can help you with? said, actually,
I want to add my kid to this appointment. So I want to bring my kid too. And I was like, shoot, is this going to be good, bad? No one's actually put me on the spot with this before. And Margo was like, okay, that's great. Do want them to come in the same time as you? And I was just shocked that she was able to respond that well, that quick. And this is, I mean, we're basically on version 3.0 now of Margo. When I did that video that you guys saw, that was like it's.
It's first release and it's gotten so much better, faster, less delay, sounds more human than even then. And, you know, the sky's the limit with where this thing is going. we, and Quin, can, Quin can tell us to be, because he's selling it all day. He can, he can help me on this one, but we don't ever really pitch it as like, Hey, have this replace your team members. We don't, we don't see it as that because you still need good people to run your practice.
You don't necessarily need it to be your first line of defense for phone calls. You just want it to be your overflow to make sure you're not missing stuff. We're firm believers that AI should not replace the people. It should replace tasks to enhance the time of the people in the practice.
Quin Briggs
100 % I actually... Sorry.
Wendy Briggs
Yeah, but also, yeah, I was gonna say, would throw this question on you too, Quin, though. You can have it set, right? So let's say somebody calls in sick and you're short people. Like, then you can actually set it up so that Margo can take first line of defense. Is that right, Quin?
Quin Briggs
Yeah, yeah, for sure. She can definitely handle first line of defense. We don't necessarily pitch it like that because there's some limitations as far as like scheduling into systems right now. It's something we're working on. We do have some kind of workarounds with that to have online scheduling using your online link, things like that. But she definitely can handle first line of defense if need be. I was laughing at Rich. actually have a note.
that he wrote for me when we first released this AI still on my desk. It says, Mango AI replaces tasks, not people. I have it on a sticky note. My desk is just full of sticky notes. But that's one thing that we always say is it's replacing tasks, not people. She's mainly there, Margo's there to handle the overflow after hours calls that people don't really have the time to deal with.
That's the great thing about Margo and AI is it's working 24-7, 365, like Rich was saying at the beginning, no sick days, no holidays off. It's always there.
Richard May
Well, and you know, for anyone who's actually working in a dental practice knows this, it's basically Murphy's law, right? As soon as a patient comes in to get checked in, the phone rings. That's just the way it works. It could be completely slow. Everything's fine. The family walks in with kids, you know, screaming and all kinds of stuff and they're loud and they haven't actually filled out any of their, you know, their forms, their digital forms. They just are trying to check in and the phone rings. And you're just like, okay, what do I do?
So either A. Margo takes that call for you or if you're just ending the call and you forget, shoot, I was supposed to take notes. What did that person say? You don't have to worry about that anymore. Mango's taking those notes, summarizing it, logging it for you. I mean, this has been like such a huge relief to office managers and front desk team members because now they don't have to worry about the stress of, I need to go back and listen to that call and remember what that patient's name was or what that detail was.
this nice clean summary that's automatically logged for you. So many wins from this, very few losses that we're seeing right now. And again, I think it speaks to our company about how we do things. We weren't trying to just sell, sell, sell and be the first ones to market. We were like, what problems can we actually solve for a dental practice and then put them to use? And that was kind of, I really respect our leadership for thinking of that first instead of just sell it and who cares if it's useful or not. That's not the kind of company we are.
Dr. John Meis
That's awesome.
Wendy Briggs
Awesome. Well, one of the things that we've long talked about at the Team Training Institute, we have three pillars of practice success. One is patient flow. One is efficiency. And in my mind, Dr. John can probably add his two cents, but having Margo as a part of your weaponry, your tool belt, let's use that instead, your tool belt, it helps solve two of those things, right? We're capturing patient flow, whatever we can, but it also enables us to do things more efficiently, right?
We've often heard of hygienists at the end of the day are sitting there writing clinical notes for an hour, sometimes an hour and half. After each call, how long was the team really spending taking the time to input that note? And now that they no longer have to do that, that really is improving patient flow, but also efficient delivery. And there's probably other time savers as well.
Dr. John Meis
So does this integrate directly with practice management software systems?
Richard May
Yes, it does. Yep.
Dr. John Meis
So the notes go right in, you don't have to cut and paste even. It's even more simple than that. That's awesome.
Richard May
Yep. Yep. And, know, we integrate with, you know, Dentrix, Eagle Soft, Open Dental, and then the most popular cloud-based ones too, Dentrix Senn, Denicon, Curve, Oryx. The list is like really long and it's always growing too. I do think that's another thing that really sets us apart in the industry is the integrations that we do have with practice management software. It's pretty unique how we go about doing it. And again, it's just, may be a minute, but after 100 calls, you save a minute on each call. That's a lot of time that we, you you saved at the end of the day or the end of the week or the end of the month, end of the year for the practice to get back to the art of dentistry and focus on, okay, how do we become better as a team as opposed to these mundane tasks that just eat up our time?
Dr. John Meis
Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Wendy Briggs
So right now, Quin, Margot's essentially for incoming calls. Yes. I'm sure you probably have people ask you all day, when are we going to get the chance to be able to do recall with Margot? Do you guys have anything like that in the works? Because that is the one task that nobody wants to do. Nobody ever practically does it. It's the thing that we do when we have time and often the team doesn't really ever have time. So it's something that we'd love to have help with.
Quin Briggs
Yeah, that is something that I definitely hear all the time. And that's a question that I'm actually going to throw over to Rich. And he might have a little better insight on kind of the timeline on how Margo is kind of developing the timeline for that.
Dr. John Meis
Well done, Quin. Well done!
Richard May
Yeah, mean, Quin's being so modest. I'm going to pitch this one back to him. No, I'm just kidding. I mean, of course, as soon as you think about voice AI answering calls, the immediate thing is, OK, so can it make calls? And we're not that far away from that. And it is the future, right? It is going to be really interesting how we go about doing that. And what I mean by that is I do think dental practices need to be careful if there are companies out there already claiming to do that, there will be regulations about letting people know that this is an AI voice recording, this is AI voice assistant, this call is gonna be recorded, an outbound call. I think the regulations are gonna get stiffer around that. if there's someone claiming to do that already, I would make sure you are making sure you're, what are your state laws already around this? Is it HIPAA compliant, what you're doing? And you know, I'd be really careful about an AI calling an insurance company. because the thing to think about too is these insurance companies, right, or doing recall, a lot of them actually have AI answering too on the other side of it. So if you want it to do insurance verifications, you just basically have AI, you have machines talking to machines, which probably doesn't get very far in the long run. But the other thing to consider too is do people want to talk to an AI, you know?
So it's gonna have to be very good. It's not quite there yet. Will it happen eventually? 100%. And will Mango have it? 100%. It just comes down to like, how good can we make it? And we don't wanna create a poor experience. Again, it goes back to when we first launched Margo, we could have released her almost a year earlier, but we didn't feel like it was ready. We didn't feel like it could have human conversations yet. And now we feel like it can. And you know.
Can it do recall? Can it actually do insurance verifications? Can it call the payers? I mean, all these things that we outsource work for or that we, or the dental practices are like nobody wants to do, have a hard time staffing for. If you can fix that problem, people are gonna adopt it like crazy. But it is a huge task as well. So you wanna make sure it's working really well if it's gonna do this. So will it happen? 100%. Is it ready right now?
I don't think so personally, but we're getting there. We're getting there.
Dr. John Meis
That's awesome. And you're so right. People have rushed with products, AI products that are not ready for prime time. was at a conference this summer and there were multiple people that had AI phone products and when they had a little phone there so you could test it out. Well, I tested out three different ones and both of them or two of the three completely failed within two questions, you know, and I mean, there's only, you know, have a outstanding phone training. And one of the things that we've learned is that the questions that you get from patients are very, very consistent, very, very predictable. If you have the answer to the top 20 questions, you know, you can do a decent job on the phone. and, and the ones that I tried two of them on literally question number two, was, it totally stumped them. And then there's this awkward pause and two of them didn't even tell you they were AI, which I think, you know, if it's people are going to figure it out, right. So you might as well might as well tell them because they're gonna know anyway, so there's a lot out there that's not very good. And so I'm super excited that you guys have taken the time to make sure that you have a really useful high quality product that is going to be helpful to practices.
Wendy Briggs
So if our listeners want more information, if they want to be able to call Mango, try it out, test it, what are you usually telling people? Where are you sending them to get insights on that?
Richard May
So this is one I'm going to pitch over to Quin because he's the guy you know what talk to for this for sure.
Quin Briggs
Yeah, yeah, I mean, if anybody wants it, you can reach out to me or wants to just hear more information. You can reach out to us or our team here at Mango. There is a phone number for Margo that you can call and test out. don't know. I'll just drop that number in here too. It's 435-216-0321. That's Margo's phone number. You can call and test. it out, see how she responds, ask the big 20 questions and see if she's got answers to them, And if you're wanting more information, you can reach out to me. don't know if I won't, if you want me to share my contact info now or. Yeah. Yeah. The phone number is 435-255-1741 or email me. It's qbriggs@mangovoice.com.
Dr. John Meis
Briggs? That's a familiar last name.
Quin Briggs
Yeah, weird, weird last name.
Wendy Briggs
It's funny, Quin works for Mango because I already knew what a great company they were. it's interesting. I have three out of my four kids who are dentistry in some way, and I love sharing this profession with them. But it's funny how that works. I reached out to Richard and said, hey, I know you guys are doing some amazing things. Do you need any great people? And it's been awesome to see you shine there, but also to be able to, you know, we were already partnered with Mango before you arrived there, but it's been fun to have you be our, our liaison and certainly help our members at retreats and events and things like that. So we appreciate that.
Richard May
Once you get into dentistry, you never get out, right? It's just like impossible. So something that's a family business now too, for sure. Yeah.
Quin Briggs
Yeah, it's been fun.
Dr. John Meis
There's a lot of truth to that. Well, Richard and Quin, thanks so much for being on today and sharing us with us more about AI and Margo's capabilities. And that's it for this episode of the Double Your Production podcast. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Briggs
Thanks everybody.
Quin Briggs
Thanks everyone.
