A call overflow service or a second front desk hire, and when each one wins

By Steven Von · 2026-10-12 · 4 min read

New patient calls go unanswered when the front desk is checking someone out. Two ways to fix it, what each costs, and the practices each one fits best.

Your front desk is checking out a crown patient, verifying benefits for tomorrow, and the second line rings. Then the third. One of those calls was a new patient who wanted to book a cleaning and will now call the office down the street.

Most practices know this happens. The question is how to fix it. There are two common answers: hire another person for the front desk, or route overflow calls to a dental-trained call service. Both work. They fit different practices.

Option one: a second front desk hire

What it costs:

• Wages for a dental front desk role vary widely by market. With payroll taxes and benefits, plan on roughly $3,500 to $5,500 a month for a full-time person in many areas.
• Training time, usually a few weeks before they are confident with your scheduling software and insurance questions.
• A workstation and phone line.

What you get:

• A person who knows your doctors, your schedule and your patients.
• Someone who can also handle insurance verification, confirmations, recall calls and treatment plan follow-up when the phone is quiet.
• More capacity for the whole office, not just the phone.

A second hire wins when:

• You are busy enough that the existing team is stretched on more than just calls.
• You have unscheduled treatment sitting in the system that nobody has time to call about.
• Your call volume is steady through the day, not just in bursts.
• You plan to add a provider within the year.

Option two: a dental call overflow service

These services answer calls your team cannot get to, either after a set number of rings or after hours. Better ones can book directly into your practice management software, or take the details and hand them off.

What it costs:

• Pricing is usually per minute, per call or a monthly plan. For a single-doctor office, many plans land somewhere between a few hundred and about a thousand dollars a month, depending on volume and whether they book directly.
• Setup time to give them your scripts, fees, insurance list and booking rules.

What you get:

• Coverage at lunch, at the morning rush, after hours and on Saturdays.
• No sick days, no turnover.
• A predictable cost that scales with call volume.

An overflow service wins when:

• Your missed calls cluster at predictable times: 8 to 9, lunch, and after 5.
• You are open limited hours. Only 14.1% of dental listings in our benchmark report show Saturday hours, and 3.8% show Sunday hours. A patient with a toothache on Saturday morning wants a human voice.
• You do not have enough non-phone work for a full-time person.

The privacy question

Any outside service that handles patient information on your behalf is likely a business associate under HIPAA, so you need a signed business associate agreement before they answer a single call. A reputable dental call service will offer one without being asked. If one hesitates, move on. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a plain-language overview of business associates worth reading before you sign.

Side by side

Measure before you choose

Pull a month of call data from your phone system. Most modern systems will show answered, missed and abandoned calls by hour. Look for two things:

1. How many calls went unanswered, and from how many unique numbers.
2. When they happened. If most missed calls are between 8 and 9 and over lunch, an overflow service covers that cheaply. If they are spread all day, your team is simply short a person.

Then put the numbers in the calculator. A single new patient is worth far more than one visit over the years, so even a handful of recovered calls a month usually covers either option. The front desk guide walks through how to price the leak and what a good phone script sounds like.

You may need both

Many growing practices end up with both: a fully staffed front desk during the day and a service for overflow and after hours. Start with whichever fixes your biggest gap, measure for 60 days, and add the other if the missed-call count is still not where you want it.

One more check while you are at it. 22.3% of dental listings show no hours on Google. If a patient cannot tell whether you are open, they may not call at all, and no amount of phone coverage fixes a call that never happens.

If you want any one service handled for you, the free 14-day trial needs no card. See the free trial page or text or call (385) 217-4728.

Steven Von, Editor
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, dental practices among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor