Your front desk can't be on the phone and with a patient at once. So calls get missed — and a missed call at a clinic is rarely a patient who waits patiently. They ring the next practice on Google and book there.
You never see it happen, which is exactly why it's easy to underrate. The number of new patients lost to unanswered calls in a busy week is usually far higher than owners assume.
The recovery is instant and automatic: the moment a call goes unanswered, a friendly text goes back — "Sorry we missed you, reply here to book or we'll call you straight back." It reaches them before they've dialled the next clinic, and it turns a lost call into a booking without anyone at the desk noticing they missed it.