How an AI receptionist works for a clinic — one call, step by step
An AI receptionist for a clinic answers every call 24/7 in the caller's language, quotes treatments and prices from the clinic's own data, holds a real appointment slot, collects the advance by WhatsApp payment link during the call, verifies it, books, and confirms to the patient and the owner. Dvaarik charges ₹0.50 for each call minute, in 30-second steps, with no setup fee and no monthly fee. Below is one real after-hours call, moment by moment, with the feature powering each step. Updated 1 Oct 2026.
What happens on the call?
1. 7:40 pm — the clinic is shut
A patient calls the clinic's number. The AI answers on the second ring, in the language the patient speaks — Hindi, Telugu, English, or mixed mid-sentence — and greets as the clinic.
2. “Do you do root canal? What does a checkup cost?”
The agent answers from the clinic's own data — the treatments, prices, doctors, and timings the clinic entered in its dashboard. It does not invent an answer it was not given; anything outside the data gets a handoff, not a guess.
3. “Can I come tomorrow evening?”
The agent checks the real diary — the doctor's hours, existing bookings, holidays — and offers only slots that genuinely exist. While the patient decides, the slot is held so two callers cannot take the same 6 pm.
4. “There is a ₹500 advance for booking”
Because the clinic enabled advance collection, the agent says so plainly, asks permission, and sends a payment link to the patient's WhatsApp — while the call is still going.
5. “I have paid — check please”
The agent checks the clinic's connected payment gateway there and then and confirms the payment on the call. Nobody at the clinic verifies a screenshot or a UTR by hand.
6. Booking confirmed — both sides know
The patient gets a WhatsApp confirmation from the clinic's own number. The owner gets a new-booking message too. A reminder follows before the appointment, and the whole call sits in the dashboard as a recording, transcript, and summary.
Every step above is what the product does today for clinics using these features — none of it is a roadmap item. Watch it yourself: message the live demo on WhatsApp at +91 79956 76588 or try the web agent at app.dvaarik.com/dvaarik-ai.
What does the clinic set up once?
There is no flow builder and nothing technical. The clinic — or the agency managing it — enters real business data in the dashboard, and the agents are configured from the clinic vertical automatically.
- Doctors and staff, with their working hours
- Treatments and services, with prices
- Clinic timings, address, and holidays
- Booking rules: slot length, advance amount, cancellation policy
- Languages the agent should speak, and when to hand off to a human
- The payment gateway connection, if advances are collected
The honest notes
- Advance collection needs the clinic's own payment gateway account connected; money settles to the clinic directly and Dvaarik takes no commission on it.
- WhatsApp runs on the clinic's own WhatsApp Business account via Meta's official connection. There is no plan to buy for WhatsApp or Instagram: each successful AI text reply costs ₹0.05, and Meta bills its message charges to the clinic directly.
- Phone calls run on the clinic's own phone company account — Plivo, Telnyx or Twilio — which bills the clinic directly for telephony and the number. Dvaarik charges ₹0.50 for each call minute, in 30-second steps.
- The agent answers only from the data the clinic entered. A thin setup gives thin answers — the 30 minutes spent entering real prices and rules is what makes the calls good.
Full pricing detail is on the pricing page; clinics run by an agency get the same product under the white-label partner programme.
What else runs beyond the phone call?
Clinic questions, answered
It answers the clinic's number around the clock, speaks the caller's language, quotes treatments and prices from the data the clinic entered, checks the real appointment diary, holds a slot while the caller decides, collects any advance by sending a payment link on WhatsApp during the call, verifies the payment with the gateway, books, and sends WhatsApp confirmations to the patient and the owner.
Doctors, treatments with prices, timings, booking rules, languages, and optionally a payment gateway connection — entered once in the dashboard. The agents are configured automatically from the clinic vertical; there is no flow builder to learn.
Yes. If advance collection is enabled, the agent sends a payment link to the caller's WhatsApp mid-call, then checks the clinic's connected gateway and confirms on the same call once the payment lands. The money goes to the clinic's own account.
Language coverage follows the speech models the clinic connects on its own accounts. Sarvam covers Indian languages, including callers who mix Hindi and English, while Google and Azure add wider international coverage. Test the exact languages your patients speak before going live.
There is no setup fee and no monthly fee. Dvaarik charges ₹0.50 for each call minute, charged in 30-second steps, and ₹0.05 for each AI text reply on WhatsApp, Instagram and website chat. The clinic connects its own phone company, speech and AI accounts, and those providers bill it directly for their part.