The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry – Episode 230

Ranked the #1 DSO Podcast!

Welcome to The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry!

From Voicemail to Virtual Reception: How AI is Transforming Patient Engagement in Dentistry

Dr. Miles Beckett, CEO of Flossy & Dr. Summer Kassmel, Owner of Castle Peak & Avon Dental have a lively discussion on:

• The current state of AI in dentistry
• Empowering staff through automation
• Patient engagement = patient satisfaction

To learn more about Flossy visit https://www.flossy.com/

Meet Fiona, your friendly AI dental receptionist – https://www.flossy.com/fiona-call-an-agent

You can find Dr. Miles Beckett on LinkedIn –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/miles-beckett-578b755/

You can also connect with Dr. Summer Kassmel on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-summer-kassmel-8936a62bb/

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From Voicemail to Virtual Reception: How AI is Transforming Patient Engagement in Dentistry Podcast Transcript

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show, the voice of the DSO industry. Join us as we talk with industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. With over 200 episodes and listeners in over 100 countries, we’re proud to be ranked the number one DSO podcast. For the latest DSO news, analysis and events, and to subscribe to our DSO Weekly e-newsletter, visit GroupDentistryNow.com. We hope you enjoyed today’s show.

Bill Neumann: Welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now show. I am Bill Neumann, and thanks so much for joining us today, whether you’re watching us on YouTube or listening to us on Apple, Spotify, or maybe you’re on the groupdentistrynow.com website. We appreciate you tuning in. Always have great conversations, have a couple of hundred podcasts under our belt now. A lot of talk around AI, and we’re going to talk about that today. And I think we’re going to get a really unique perspective from a founder, actually a medical doctor, of a new AI solution for call answering front desk solution. And then we also have a dentist who has two really successful practices. She’s an entrepreneur as well, so we’re going to kind of get into her background. But we can talk a lot about artificial intelligence and try and make it make some sense. I think there might be a little bit of overload in the industry from so much AI. And I think sometimes you just want to shut down because there is a lot of information coming at you all at once. And it can be overwhelming. And it seems like every 15 days or so, it changes pretty drastically. I mean, this learning curve and just the innovations in AI. are coming at you pretty quickly. And you’re trying to run your dental practices or your dental group at the same time. So we’re gonna try and help you out today. So we have with us right now, Dr. Myles Beckett. He is, like I said, a medical doctor actually, turned a serial entrepreneur, and he’s the co-founder of a company called Flossy. So we’re gonna learn more about them today. And we have also with us, Dr. Summer Casmo. And she runs Castle Peak Dental as well as Avon Dental. And she also has a bunch of other things she’s doing. And we’re going to let her talk about that. She is not a practicing clinician right now. Is that right? You’re actually just managing the practices and all your other businesses. So great to have you here, Summer and Miles. It’s going to be a great conversation.

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Thank you for having me.

Bill Neumann: Thank you. Hey, Miles, why don’t you kick things off a little bit about your background. Talk about those couple of startups that you had. You’ve exited and then how you got into dentistry. How does a medical doctor get into dentistry? Kind of bring us to that. And then Summer, we want to find out more about you.

Dr. Miles Beckett: Sure, yeah, no problem. So yeah, as you said, I originally am a medical doctor, was a neuroscience major, and I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley. And then I went to UC San Diego for medical school. And then I was a plastic surgery resident at Loma Linda. And so, you know, I had a clinical background but I’d always been really into technology. I programmed a little bit in high school and, you know, didn’t love clinical practice and really was excited about the internet. And then ultimately what became known as Web 2.0 and social media. So I left medicine in 2005, moved back to LA, got really involved in the early, online video scene. So I started making videos, originally actually video podcasting in the very early days and then got involved in YouTube at the very beginning of YouTube. And so first venture was creating what became the number one channel on YouTube in the first few years of its existence. And then that turned into a digital studio. I sold that company in 2012. I was ultimately like an influencer business. And then started a SaaS credentialing business, which was for verifying mainly doctor and nurse backgrounds, although we did a little bit with dentists, and then went on to start Flossy. And Flossie originally was more of a marketplace, but we got super into AI over the last couple of years and ended up building Fiona.

Bill Neumann: Thank you, Miles. That’s great. Dr. Summer Kassmel. So again, I mentioned Castle Peak Dental, Avon Dental, Ladder 5 Mentorship and Resources, Vail Valley Dental Assisting School, Dental Career Academy. You’ve got a lot going on. So I’m sure I missed something, but a little bit about your background and the company, because you’re obviously an entrepreneur. You’re very, very busy. And then maybe talk about why are you on this podcast?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, thank you, by the way, for the opportunity just to even share my story. So, you know, I started just like everybody else as a general dentist and I ran a small practice, just me, you know, my couple of hygienists, my small team. And I ended up with some really big health challenges that made it to where, you know, it was hip dysplasia and it was severe enough that I joked, I really couldn’t get up out of the dental chair. So people would have to wheel me to the next patient. And it ended up that my doctor was like, you’re going to be completely out of commission for about 18 months doing multiple surgeries, rehab, things like that. So I don’t know what you need to do, but you got to figure out, you know, do you sell your practice? Do you bring in somebody else? What do you do? And that’s what set me down kind of the road of how do I create businesses that aren’t completely reliant on my hands doing all the dentistry. And so that led me to coaching programs and so much self-development. And I did kind of quickly recognize there was a formula to it. And everybody’s ladder of success is going to look different. But for me, I acquired I ended up acquiring four offices up in my area, and then I just merged them into two bigger locations. But with that, it just like I said, it led me towards maybe understanding better the business of dentistry. And that’s so much what I love to teach now is helping, you know, all dentists, but specifically women doctors who are also moms and have families, you know, how do you do this more predictably and ultimately creating a business that you don’t want to leave? And so the products that I have, the coaching that I do is all around how to build a business that you love that isn’t fully reliant on your two hands.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. I think there’s, there’s probably another podcast there from you, just how to take four locations and actually consolidate them and operate, you know, larger locations and just the opportunity there to, you know, from a savings perspective and from a patient perspective, the patient experience, but I digress, but that one, I’m gonna, I’m making a note here that I’m gonna ask you to probably come back on again. Miles, you know, again, maybe lessons learned from your time on the medical side, how’s that really carried over to help you build and scale, you know, this business, maybe some of the others, I mean, is there, some things that you learn there. It’s kind of an interesting transition.

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, I mean, I think that the medical training process is, first of all, it’s a maturing process at a young age. Second, it’s kind of a trial by fire. So you definitely, you know, especially a surgery internship, it’s hard and you’re working very, very long hours. And the stakes are really high. You’re making lots and lots of literally life and death decisions with incomplete information, particularly like when I work in the ER, I did trauma and things like that. And so, you know, whenever it’s like the hardest day running a startup, I always tell myself, well, you know, at least the patient’s not going to die. So the bar, the bar is pretty high in medicine. And I think that that kind of prepared me, um, you know, things around more general business strategy and, um, you know, management and things like that. Obviously I learned that kind of through, through, through starting companies and building companies.

Bill Neumann: So you’ve mentioned before that dentistry is at the forefront of AI-driven automation, which is, I don’t know, like I always hear that the dental industry is behind the times. Like we hear this, right? Oh, you know, vet and medical and all these other healthcare verticals are so far advanced and we’re behind the times by five or 10. You hear this all the time. So I’m kind of interested, Miles, you know, why you think that you know, that the industry is prime for AI automation?

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, no, I mean, so I mean, I think dental is an awesome industry. And so the last business, our primary customer was surgery centers, surgery center, the industry is a bit more of a profit driven, sort of like a normal business as compared to other parts of health care, where there’s a lot of weird incentives because of insurers and things like that. And I think Dental is great because you’re helping people, the people in the industry are wonderful, but it’s also an industry that cares about business, that is concerned about costs and concerned about revenue and profit and all that, and I think that’s awesome. You know, in healthcare, even with surgery centers, it was still a bit of a challenge to get people to change. The incentives weren’t quite as strong. Whereas what I found in dental is that dentists and people that run DSOs are really eager to improve and to change and to learn and to adopt new technology. Maybe part of that has to do with the sort of surgical-ish nature of it, where there’s a lot of tools, there’s a lot of technology already that’s inherent in dentistry. And so, yeah, I mean, I think I’ve found that in general, the technology systems are better in dental than what I was seeing in health care. And then secondarily, that there’s just a willingness to adopt new technology.

Bill Neumann: That is good to hear. And I, yeah, I think that the industry is certainly, and I said that at this at the beginning of the show, that there’s a lot of solutions out there. And I think it can become pretty confusing and overwhelming and you know, there are some surveys out there, and it’s not healthcare necessarily related, but there was one that was, Gartner did early 2025, where they talked about AI adoption, or the lack of it, and a lot of failures. So there’s buy-in from a lot of organizations, but whether it’s implemented well, whether it’s successful, that’s another thing. And so I think Having a company, we’re going to dig into this like Flossy where it’s not just about the solution, but the support behind that as well and the assistance. Summer, from your perspective, a lot of challenges in the industry, this HR dilemma, which you actually have some businesses dedicated to it now. continues, right? We thought it was, you know, potentially just the thing that was happening during COVID, but it seems to continue on. And I think that’s where solutions like Flossie really can shine and help out organizations. But what do you think some of the biggest pain points are?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Yeah, it’s such a great question, because I think so many of us did think, OK, after COVID, we’re going to start to, quote unquote, get back to normal. And I don’t know if any of us, because I had been a dentist for a long time prior to COVID, I knew what normal was supposed to maybe look like. And in a post-COVID world, I had no idea the level of difficulty our offices would have. you know, not just hiring, but retention as well. And I used to think, well, we’re in more of a resort type of community. But then I get the opportunity to coach 40 offices at least or so a month. And I was finding it was across the country that in a post-COVID world, this normal never really came back. And that’s what led me early on to start looking at outsourced options. What are things that I could do that would lead to consistency of care and still give some sort of good customer service that patients wanted, but also made it significantly more convenient and efficient for, you know, our patients. And so, you know, the pain point has always been not enough human resources, but then it turned into not just not enough human resources, but also not enough human resources that could stay for a length of time to get onboarded well and really adopt into the culture. And I think that’s a pain point that’s still hitting people across the country, some areas more than others, but I think that’s still really present in a lot of areas.

Bill Neumann: And Miles, are you hearing the same things from some of your customers? I mean, is this, HR is a challenge, right? Finding people, to your point, Summer, also finding people that are gonna stick around long enough to actually become part of the organization and gel with the culture that you’ve created. Miles, talk a little bit about what you’re hearing from people.

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, I mean, I, it resonates. Um, so again, when we started Flossy in 2020, uh, in the pandemic and the original business was more of a marketplace matching patients to dentists and we were a discount plan. And so we functioned almost, almost like a DSL in the sense that we were marketing to patients and local markets. We were booking them through our website. We had a whole scheduling system. They were booking with a dentist as part of our network, and then they would see that dentist and check out, and we made money by getting a transaction fee. So we cared very much if the patient showed up. We cared if they got their treatment plan done. We had our own treatment coordinators. We had our own call center. So we functioned almost like a DSO except for the actual delivery of care, but all of the business and operational pieces we were doing. And so we had the same issue around staffing challenges. We saw it with the practices that we worked with. In fact, we had our highest volume practice in Philadelphia had to turn offline and we saw like our volume plummet in that area because they lost their front desk person and they couldn’t hire somebody for like two or three months. And so we literally, the reason we built Fiona was in response to seeing staffing challenges, thinking about using AI for front desk automation, and then our own experiences running a call center and a desire to be able to have like technology actually handle calls at a minimum to augment our team. And so that was kind of what was exciting to us and very much resonates.

Bill Neumann: probably a good time to introduce the listeners and viewers to Fiona Miles. You mentioned her. Who or what is Fiona?

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, so we refer to Fiona as her as like a person. Obviously, she’s an AI. So Fiona is an AI receptionist that can answer calls that come into practices. She can schedule new and existing patients. She can reschedule patients. She can cancel appointments. She can answer questions about the practice. We actually just went live with two-way texting back and forth with Fiona. So you can engage with her over text as well and also web-based chat. So you can chat with Fiona on the website. So she really is meant to be like a sort of like a superhuman augmentation to the front office staff handling, you know, all the requests that come in.

Bill Neumann: So Summer, what made you try, work with Flossy and now you have Fiona in your office or offices?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Well, you know, the precipice was staffing shortages. But then, you know, when I would get people who were really talented, good, and I’m paying a lot for these people to be in the offices, I want them to do what really only a human can do. I want them to do the highest you know, value services that they can do with patients. And if I can automate anything else, I’m going to try to figure out how to do that. And I’m always kind of thinking through, you know, for myself and my businesses, where the touch points are and where we do those touch points. They’re just not as relevant anymore as maybe they used to be. And so in my search to figure out how to create the highest value people in office, it led me to Flossy because I did recognize that something like scheduling a new patient phone call, you know, if you add it up over the course of the month and you get 50 new patients, if somebody is taking 10, 15, 20 minutes to schedule, you know, one person or four, you know, I had to really listen to figure out Is this where the highest value is? Or is there something that could create a consistent and effective result without having to use a human? And that’s what led me to starting to search what companies are out there to be able to do that. And AI, of course, at that point was up and coming still, but there was there was enough platforms out there to be able to check into. And when I looked into Fiona, actually, they made it really easy. And this is what I loved is I could do a test call myself and really hear what my patients would be hearing. And I was kind of blown away as to how good she sounded, how well she handled things. It was really streamlined and it was super efficient and sounded really great. And so, you know, I think for me, it started with wanting to augment the front office, but now I’m seeing just how much Fiona’s capable of doing, and our patients are actually really enjoying the process too, because it’s so much more efficient for them.

Bill Neumann: You made a really great point. It’s not just about, there may be some listeners or viewers in the audience that don’t have HR issues. They’re fortunate, they’ve got all the staff that they need, but are they really doing what they should be doing in the practices. Can you free up some time for them to actually focus on the things they do best? They may not want to answer the phones, but that’s kind of what they’re stuck having to do. So I think that, you know, that is a really, really good point. It’s like we can automate something. And then you make another point too, and Miles, I’d love to get your perspective on this is the patients actually like it too. And I think it might be more of an expectation now when we talk about you know, this customer experience, right? Because patients are customers too. We call it the patient experience, okay? And sometimes we just think of clinical. Okay, the patient experience is just clinical. Well, no, it’s everything, right? And so then do they want things automated? Do they want to make things easy? But Myles, what are you hearing, you know, not just from your customers, the dental practices or the DSOs, but what’s the patient feedback like?

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, I mean, across the board, it’s been positive, both from practices and patients. And we send surveys after every call. And so, or not every call, but we offer it. And yeah, those patients love it. They really enjoy engaging with Fiona. They say things like it was more efficient, it was easier. I got what I needed to done. Um, and yeah, we have, you know, we do like a CSAT score and it’s super high. So like it’s, it’s been really, really positive. And if you look, the other thing we do too, is we look at, um, our customers prior call log data. And as compared to typical human calls, calls with Fiona are about half the length. And so people are getting things done a lot more quickly with Fiona than we otherwise would have.

Bill Neumann: I know I find myself looking for solutions where I don’t have to speak to people sometimes. It’s amazing how, you know, hey, can I figure this out without having to engage with somebody? It’s awful and doesn’t always work. And I kind of think of this more along the lines of airlines and rental car and things like that. If it’s easier to find your solution online, through chat, through text, through AI voice, I think a lot of people like that option if it’s offered. Dr. Kassmel, did you have any reservations initially when you were evaluating AI? Like, gosh, this seems like something I should do, but I’m just kind of curious, was there any hesitation from you and or your staff?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: So I have to admit, I am always the one who is willing to try everything. I’m, I’m kind of that high risk taker profile. So it’s, it’s usually never me that’s so concerned. It’s always my team that will have reservations and. You know, they’ve gotten so incredible at adopting change just due to the success we’ve had with other outsource things. But, you know, I will say, of course, I think my reservations were the same as anyone’s as to. you know, how would the patient or customer feel with the interaction? You know, would it be a good experience? Or would it feel just, we’ve lost so much of that customer service that makes us great. So that was always my biggest thing. The other thing was, of course, scheduling snafus that, you know, potentially could gum up a day or make, you know, the doctors frustrated. And My team, like I said, I’m, I’m grateful at this point, they didn’t have too many reservations, other than the scheduling, you know, concerns. How would it schedule? Could we train her to schedule just like us? What’s the process of getting her to schedule, you know, ideally to the goals that we have, you know, within the parameters we have? And, you know, the cool thing is, is we’ve learned you can teach Fiona, and if you work with your specialist on it, you can teach her to do so many of the same things on a more consistent basis than schedulers you might have in office. So a lot of my fears were parlayed, but it’s always a work in progress too. We go back and forth with feedback to try to ensure every week, are we helping Fiona to get better, to serve our offices better?

Bill Neumann: I’d love to dig more into that. Maybe Miles, you could chime in on how your customers, how Summer and her team works with a specialist to kind of fine-tune Fiona. What does that process look like?

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, so using Fiona is not like using Chat GPT in the sense that We have built it such that it can be customized to the practices and customized to dental, you know, to begin with. And so there’s a ton of work that went into building the product around knowledge, around dentistry, around the scheduling logic, around a variety of different rules and around the, just kind of the conversation, certain conversations in dental are very specific. And so all of that comes pre-baked so that the starting point is already good. But even with that, every practice is different. Every practice has their own scheduling rules. They have their own dentist. They have their own usage of their PMS. Their columns are set up differently, blah, blah, blah. And so there’s an implementation period. Usually it’s around 30 days where we work with the customer to get everything set up. But then even after that, typically for 30, 60, 90, even more days, There’s tweaking and tuning. One example is we work a lot with a practice to customize the greeting that Fiona gives. We’re very focused on trying to reduce the hang up rate as much as possible. Fiona performs dramatically better than voicemail. And that’s really the main way we’ve been selling her. So like 70, 80% of people hang up on voicemail. With Fiona, it’s the opposite. So a dramatic improvement. But that can be tweaked. And so we work on that. There’s a lot of work around the scheduling rules, you know, things might end up not quite in the right place and we’ll tweak things as that goes as well. And so, yeah, we’re always taking feedback. The other big area is around the FAQ system. So Fiona has effectively like a brain with knowledge in it that allows her to answer questions that patients have. And we set that up again during implementation. But obviously, as patients are calling in live, there may be questions that come up that Fiona doesn’t know the answer to. And by getting feedback from the practice, we’re able to update that in the FAQ, such that going forward, Fiona can answer those questions perfectly. You know, and I think that One important point to make is that with Fiona, when she learns something, she knows it and she does it consistently. And I think that is the biggest difference between AI broadly as compared to a human in that it’s a lot more consistent once things are going really well.

Bill Neumann: Miles, do you get any, is there any pushback or hesitation from people or maybe give us the top couple of reasons why somebody wouldn’t want to use AI right now? piece for you here.

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think so. I would say you kind of hit on this a bit, which is like, I think there’s been a lot of hype. I think that everybody is excited about AI generally. But like, you know, in the world, the hype around AI is insane. I think in dental, it’s been there’s a lot of hype as well. And so I think the biggest hesitation is just like, can it actually does it actually work at all? What can it do? Is it going to deliver? So I think that’s been the biggest I don’t even think I’d call pushback, but that’s been the biggest hesitation or the questions that come up. And so one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve been pretty transparent and said, look, like as again, as compared to voicemail, Fiona crushes it like, you know, with voicemail, if it’s a new patient that’s calling, if you don’t call them back immediately, you’re not getting that booking. And so if it’s an overnight call or a weekend call, it’s just dead. It’s going to go to the dentist that is taking after hours calls. Maybe they can afford to have somebody answering or overseas or whatever it might be. And so she’s immediately getting new patient bookings that you wouldn’t have gotten. And so I think that that really just showing that value to the customer has set us apart. And then, you know, working really hard to tweak Fiona and tune her, not just on a practice by practice basis, but also across our entire network, you know, like we We actually have an AI internally that listens to all of the Fiona calls, critiques them and breaks them down and provides information to our product people and engineers to make her better literally every day. I mean, we’re pushing updates multiple times a week.

Bill Neumann: And you mentioned something which is pretty important. I think the number is somewhere around 37%, close to 40% of all calls go unanswered. They don’t happen, which is a crazy number. I mean, it really is when you think about it. So you can leverage Fiona for that, for sure. So it’s not just about not having staff to do it. I mean, people do go home, right? So you’ve got, and you talked a little bit about it going to voicemail versus Fiona handling it and the success that you’ve seen there. Do you have any results or ROI, some numbers that you might be able to share, Myles?

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, absolutely. And I would just, I would just add to what you said and say, I think the best way to think about AI and about AI receptionists and Fiona specifically right now is around that capturing calls that are being missed, the 30 to 40% of calls that are being missed on average, we see some practices that are as high as 50. And think about the dollars that you are spending on marketing. And if, if you’re missing half the calls, you could see literally your marketing costs get cut in half because the leakage is just insane. And like, you know, we know this because again, we ran a call center, we did local marketing, like the margins are so thin in terms of customer acquisition costs in dental that An improvement of even 10% more new patients booked is dramatic. 20, 30 is like crazy. So yeah, I think that that’s the way to think about it. And so for Dr. Kassmel, we’ve had 16 new patient bookings in 60 days working with her. We have 57 existing patients that were booked. And about 14 hours of staff time that we kind of estimated were offloaded to Fiona. But if you look at the ROI just from the patient booking, the new patient bookings, like it’s dramatically ROI positive. And we see this across all of our customers, like effectively all of our customers are ROI positive. It’s just a question of like how much.

Dr. Summer Kassmel: And I will say to that, we have people who, right now, Fiona augments. So look at, I mean, I just looked at that data and I was like, wow, that’s with her augmenting on evenings, weekends, and really just the overflow of what my people can’t. you know, handle. And I was thinking to myself, like, boy, just the number of hours that she’s saved, if I were to pay that in the staff wages up here, that would be huge. And I think that’s just testament to itself of like, gosh, how much are we potentially missing? Because I think to myself, The avatar of the patients that we see are very similar to me. They’re really busy, you know, moms and dads with kids and running around to a whole bunch of different things and thinking about scheduling a dental appointment might not actually come about until seven o’clock at night when they’re sitting and they’re like, oh man, I needed to get that scheduled. And that’s where I can see, you know, there’s been such positive impact from Fiona is most likely with avatars just like me.

Bill Neumann: Dr. Kassmel, what was the scenario prior to using Fiona? Was it voicemail picking up after hours?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: So I do have outsourced call people that only work for my offices. And they can handle a decent amount of the volume. And then my team is able to pick up secondary to that. Then that’s really all I had. So after hours, and we watched our Mango dashboard. And we could see when the high call volumes happened. But anything really after hours, you know, much like Miles said, it did end up going to voicemail if we were lucky. Same with weekends and things like that. So we didn’t have anything that was consistent for those outliers. And what we’ve now recognized is some of those outliers weren’t inpatients.

Bill Neumann: I think you both make a really good point. I just want to highlight what Miles said and what you said, Summer, as well. When you think about the ROI side of things, you’ve got, OK, well, freeing up the staff time to do other things, what’s the value there of their time and what I would be paying them? But then the other thing is the marketing side of it. It’s like, OK, well, we missed all these potential customers. And how many of them aren’t coming back? And let’s say we’re missing 40%. All right. And let’s say, well, I’m sure there’s a percentage out there that are not going to, they’re going to call somebody else because they want to see somebody. It’s probably a pretty high percentage, or at least even if they do get back to you, there’s maybe like, oh, gosh, they’re so tough to get in touch with. It’s so hard to make an appointment here. So there’s a frustration level and people may fall off that way. But I think that is a great point that you have to really figure in that marketing cost, too. And it’s like, OK, you either save that money or that money is reinvested in new patients because you’re not losing these patients that are coming in, you know, through these calls that you are not missing now. Miles, I know you’re going to jump in and say something I interrupted you.

Dr. Miles Beckett: No, no, I think that summary is perfect. And, you know, I agree. And that’s, again, like that’s really what it comes down to from an absolute minimum. The most obvious ROI from Fiona is you’re booking new patients from missed calls that you otherwise would have lost. And, you know, the industry data says that if you don’t call a new patient back within an hour, you will not get that booking. What we found when we were running a call center was it was way shorter than that. We did actual measurements around this and we found that after 30 seconds of not calling them back, you start to see a drop off and in a minute it’s pretty dramatic. And so like people, you know, it’s it’s a it’s a rapid pace world out there. And what happens is it’s not just that the person is is calling another dentist. It’s that they’re not going to answer the call back like they’re doing something else now. And then maybe they forget about it. And maybe the pain wasn’t so bad. Maybe it got a little better. Maybe they’re waiting. Maybe they are calling another dentist like three days later or it’s just you have to get them when they call.

Bill Neumann: Very, very good points. We’ll talk a little bit about this. As far as human and AI collaboration, we always worry that AI is going to take jobs away. But it’s really, I think, from the perspective of what we’re talking about anyway, currently, this is supporting The human staff, whether it’s they’re busy doing other things, because again, nobody’s just dedicated typically to answering phones, at least in the practice itself. You may have call centers that handle that, but even with those, you need that AI support as well. Dr. Kassmel, just from your perspective, the staff probably was a little hesitant at first. How have they embraced or have they embraced Fiona?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Oh, they fully embraced Fiona, but they see it as, I mean, they really do see it as such a huge help. And it’s taking those low value type tasks that, you know, a human may not need to do to get the same result. They’re seeing it as really freeing up so much of their time. And, you know, when I talk to other doctors about utilization of some of these outsourced products in AI, I always warn them. I think sometimes we want that magic bullet that we can just insert it and it will immediately do everything perfectly. And I tell them, including my own team, this is going to take some time to fine tune, to have it work exceptionally well. And anything we’ve outsourced, whether that be billing, calls, anything, you know, If you’re understanding the expectations of there will be an onboarding process, we are gonna need to train this outsourced technology to understand us better and who we are and our expectations. The more we recognize that we’re gonna have to do that and put the time and energy towards it, the better we keep finding the results are and the more my team loves it and embraces it. Where I find sometimes, I know we’ve gotten in trouble potentially in the past and I think maybe other offices have is, like I said, having this expectation of it, set it, forget it, and it’ll do everything just right. And then they get frustrated in the process when things especially mess up the schedule. And I always warn doctors, you know, never forget a human who you’re onboarding who has little or no dental experience, the ramp up period is going to take even longer. And to Myles point, it’s still not always even going to be consistent when they’re doing it. You know, whereas Fiona, once she learns it, it stays consistent. So I would never say that, you know, it’s the panacea to fix all things, but I think, you know, I know for my team, once they’ve understood expectations around onboarding, how to be patient and consistent with that onboarding of the technology, how to give feedback weekly and work with a specialist. They’ve seen dramatically, I mean, he just told you the numbers, they’ve seen how much time it frees up for them to do the things that they know are the most high impact in the offices. And that allows me to be able to pay them more because they can bring more value to their position quicker because they’re not doing low level tasks.

Bill Neumann: We start to wrap things up here. I wanted to talk a little bit about the future of the industry and then also, as you see it, the future of AI’s impact on the industry. So maybe, Myles, we can start with you. I know you’re probably continually working on things and innovating, but let’s get your window into the future. Sure.

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, I mean, I think, look, I think this, I think AI technology, specifically the large language models, which is really what most people mean when they talk about AI now. are incredibly powerful. They are not magic. They are not, in my opinion, artificial general intelligence. But they are really, really good at completing certain types of tasks. And when used in more complex, kind of robust systems like Flossy, They provide a lot of power, particularly in specialized verticals with repetitive, redundant tasks that historically software was not as good at because software is perfectly precise, but because of the fuzziness of how LLMs work, It can really tackle more fuzzy type problems. And so I think what we’re going to see in dental and the more broadly is more and more of these like mundane wrote types of tasks that humans have still had to do in conjunction with computers. literally go away entirely. Copying and pasting from one software to another, going through a document and finding some specific information and putting it into a spreadsheet. Again, answering a call and scheduling somebody by looking through a calendaring system, doing it via text. We have a co-pilot concept we’re working on that would basically add a lot of augmentation just to day-to-day workflows for staff. So again, You know, I think that we’re just going to see more and more and more of this like AI powered augmentation of humans, such that a lot of the mundane rote things we don’t have to do. And we can focus more on the, oh, there’s a patient here in the office and I can talk to them and I can counsel them and I can help them.

Bill Neumann: Dr. Kasmel, how about just your perspective on how AI feels going to impact your practices, but then the industry as a whole as well?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: I honestly echo everything Miles said. I was shaking my head emphatically because that’s exactly how I feel is, you know, I think and the humans I love to work with are always wanting to find new ways to be creative and grow. Well, if I’m hiring those people, they’re not usually the ones wanting to do those rote redundant. tasks over and over. And, you know, that is my hope. And it’s funny, I was talking to Miles before last week of, you know, I can still see there’s so many spots that I’m, I’m excited at the prospect of AI being able to augment offices with these redundant tasks to free us up to be able to One, have the consistency for our patients of the behind the scenes redundant tasks. Consistency would be incredible in offices and save us so much money. But then secondly, we actually do have the time to really do what matters, which I think in an AI world, patients are going to walk into a practice and they’re going to want the high touch. Well, it’s hard to have the high touch when you’re nonstop answering the phone or doing tons of, you know, small, low level tasks. You can’t always be really present with the patients. So that’s what I’m excited for. Um, and I, I, I think sky’s the limit. I think it’s just, you know, our patients and helping to develop it.

Bill Neumann: Last couple things here, and given that you’re both serial entrepreneurs and you’ve got a lot of experience with startups and small businesses and large businesses, our audience is full of dental entrepreneurs. So just some advice would be wonderful for the audience. make sure we get your contact information as well. But why don’t we start with you, Summer, just your advice to the clinicians out there that may be running a couple of practices, maybe they’ve got even four or five, or maybe they have one and they’re just looking to add a second one. Love to get your advice. And then maybe any tips, since it sounds like you’re the one that’s willing to try all the different technologies out there. What do you start with first?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Yeah, well, that’s sometimes hard to peg down, but I will say I was just running this exercise, it’s funny, today, this morning, which is I’m always reanalyzing what my highest and best use is and really thinking through during my creative space time, my focus time, am I really doing the things that are the most productive or am I just checking things off? And that’s what I would say to doctors who are looking to grow or they’re looking to do new things. There’s only certain people in the practice who sit in a seat of being able to look and experiment with creative things like AI, other technology and automation. And if you don’t allow yourself time in the week and really dedicate to that time of doing the things that only you can do with the highest and best use, you’re going to miss potentially some of the things that grow your practice so much easier without your finger having to be on the button all the time.

Bill Neumann: And Miles, how about you? A little some some advice for for the people in the audience.

Dr. Miles Beckett: I mean, my general entrepreneurship advice is don’t give up. Being a founder of any type of a business is very stressful. There’s a lot of ups and downs. There’s success, but there’s a lot of setbacks. And I think that the biggest thing that differentiates those that are quote successful entrepreneurs versus those that are not is persistence and grit and pushing through the hard times and ultimately finding the path. So I think that’s first and foremost. The second, I would say, is really listening to your customers. So what do patients want? How can you deliver the absolute best experience for them? And that’s how we feel. And I think, as Dr. Kasnell said, we were talking about that. And I’m excited to dive in deeper with her on her list of what are all the other things that Fiona can be doing. We talk to our customers constantly, and we learn from them. And I think that if you follow those two principles, more likely than not, you’re gonna succeed.

Bill Neumann: Well, thank you both. This has been a really great conversation. And I hope everybody in the audience, this has piqued your curiosity on the use of AI. And some of you probably are already experimenting with it. You may have some solutions, you may not. You may have had some false starts with some other solutions out there. But I think it’s a great time to invest in AI and invest in organizations like Flossy, that it’s not just about the solution, it’s about the support and it’s about, just like you mentioned, Myles, a second ago, it’s really listening to people like Summer and what she’s doing in her practice and how the product can really grow with the needs of the different DSOs and group practices that exist out there because the models are all different. Everybody’s doing things just a little bit differently in the practices and everybody seems to be doing pretty well. So it’s not like one model is necessarily better than the other, but it is really great to have flexible solutions. It’s great, Myles, that you and your team are really kind of listening to your customers. If people want to find out about Flossie or contact you, Myles, what’s the best way to do that?

Dr. Miles Beckett: Yeah, they can go to flossy.com, F-L-O-S-S-Y.com, or they can follow me on X, Twitter. I’m at M Beckett, M-B-E-C-K-E-T-T.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Beckett. And Dr. Cazimel, if people want to learn more about or contact you or learn more about the various things that you have going on, because you have your dental assisting, you’ve got a lot going on. I also watched probably three or four of your podcasts that you’ve been on. So what are the best ways to kind of find what you’re doing and reach out to you?

Dr. Summer Kassmel: Yeah, so it’s just summercasmo.com. And then there’s a website that has the different things and products that we offer to help, you know, dental offices as well as mentorship opportunities, um, as well as on social media. I think it’s just drsummercasmo.com.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. And we’ll make sure we drop those website addresses in there and contact information, the show notes. Thank you both. Great conversation. And hopefully everybody feels very comfortable and brave enough now to try some AI. It really is, I think, going to be something that’s going to help your practices. And also, I wouldn’t worry too much about your staff maybe initially being a little hesitant, but I think they’re going to embrace it. And you may even get a thank you from them afterwards. So wouldn’t that be nice? But thanks, everybody, for listening and watching us today. Until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.

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