Common questions, real answers

Onboarding takes 1–2 weeks per practice. Week 1 is the technical setup: connecting Open Dental, porting or forwarding your phone number, and configuring your AI's knowledge base with your FAQs and services. Week 2 is validation — you listen to a few calls, we fine-tune the AI's responses, and you go live with confidence. We don't flip a switch and disappear.

No. ForgeDental connects to your existing PMS and reads your appointments, patients, and schedule. We write back when the AI books a new appointment. Your PMS stays exactly as-is. At V1 launch we support Open Dental. Dentrix and Eaglesoft connections are in development — coming later this year.

Yes. You can either port your current practice number to ForgeDental (so the AI answers that line directly) or forward calls to a ForgeDental number during business hours, after hours, or both. Most practices forward after-hours calls first, then expand from there once they're comfortable with how the AI handles conversations.

The AI uses a natural, professional voice — not a robotic tree menu. During onboarding you can choose the AI's name, its tone (warm and friendly vs. crisp and efficient), and the specific greeting it uses. The AI speaks using your practice's actual information — doctor names, services, hours, and anything you put in the knowledge base.

During onboarding, you build a knowledge base — a set of documents about your practice. Services you offer, your doctors' names and specialties, your hours, your cancellation policy, your directions. The AI receptionist draws from this knowledge base every time a patient asks a question. You can update it any time.

The AI is trained to say so clearly and offer to take a message or transfer the call to your team rather than guess. We configure specific escalation rules during onboarding — for example, all insurance questions route to staff automatically. You decide where the AI hands off and where it keeps going.

Some will notice; many won't. We don't hide it — if a patient asks directly, the AI identifies itself as an automated assistant. In practice, most patients care more about whether their question gets answered and whether they can book an appointment, not whether the voice is human or AI.

The AI is available 24/7. When a patient calls at 10pm on Sunday, the AI answers, books the appointment if the schedule allows, or takes a message for your team. After-hours booking uses real-time availability from your Open Dental schedule — it won't book into blocked operatories or provider unavailable slots.

No. ForgeDental is month-to-month by default. Annual plans save 15% and are billed upfront. We'd rather earn your business every month than lock you in.

On Starter, if you approach your call or SMS limits, we send an alert at 80% and 95% of the cap. We don't hard-suspend service. If you routinely hit the cap, we'll recommend upgrading. On Professional and Scale, calls and SMS are effectively unlimited within 10DLC throughput constraints.

We don't offer a self-serve free trial — the product requires onboarding (connecting your PMS, configuring your knowledge base, setting up call routing) to be meaningful. We do offer a live demo where you can see the AI receptionist handle real calls and the Insights dashboard query real dental data. Book one at /contact.php.

Yes. Practices with 3 or more locations qualify for volume pricing. Contact our sales team and we'll put together a custom quote based on your location count and tier.

ForgeDental is built on HIPAA-ready infrastructure. We sign Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with Professional and Scale tier customers. The Starter tier includes the technical controls but does not include a formal BAA — upgrade to Professional if your compliance requirements include a signed BAA.

Patient data is stored in the United States on encrypted infrastructure. We use tenant-isolated database schemas — your data is never mixed with another practice's data at the database level. Backups are encrypted and retained per HIPAA guidelines.

Your practice's designated users have access to your account. ForgeDental engineering staff can access anonymized system logs for support and debugging but do not have routine access to patient records. Access to PHI by our staff requires documented justification and is logged.

All AI-handled calls are recorded for quality review and are stored encrypted. You have access to playback through your account portal. Patients are notified of recording at the start of each call. Call recordings are retained for 90 days by default and can be extended on Scale tier.