What missed calls cost a dental practice

Missed new-patient calls a week, multiplied by the share who would have booked, multiplied by what a new patient is worth to you, multiplied by 52. That's the yearly cost in lost income, before you count unfilled slots or lost private treatment.

Headline figures for all small businesses don't tell you much about a dental practice. A BT Business survey of UK small businesses, published on 1 October 2026, put the average yearly cost of missed calls at £1,597 for businesses with 1 to 9 employees and £3,753 for those with 10 to 49. BT sells its own AI receptionist and describes the estimate as indicative, and it isn't specific to dentistry. Your own figures will tell you far more.

Here's the sum with made-up inputs for a mixed NHS and private practice. They aren't averages for dentistry and they aren't Ringzel customer data. Replace each line with yours.

1. 14 missed calls × 30% = 1.2 lost new patients a week.
2. 21.2 × £300 = £360 in lost income a week.
3. 3£360 × 52 = £18,720 a year.

If only one caller in ten would have booked, the same sum still comes to £6,240 a year. Our missed call calculator does the arithmetic with your own figures, and our guide to what a missed call costs a UK trade explains the method in more detail.

The sum treats every missed caller as lost, when some will ring back. It also leaves out what a patient brings over the years: recalls, hygiene visits, family members and the friend they recommend. Those pull in opposite directions, so the plain sum is a fair starting point.

More than the first check-up. Work it out from what new patients actually spent with you in their first year, including hygiene, treatment and any plan payments.

Pull the last 50 new patients from your practice software and average their first-year spend, splitting NHS and private if your mix is uneven. For NHS patients, the NHS charge bands that patients pay aren't the same as what your contract pays the practice for a course of treatment, so work from your own contract figures. For private patients on a membership plan, include a year of plan payments.

Potentially far more than a check-up, because implant, aligner and cosmetic enquiries are high-value and the caller is usually comparing several practices. Run them as a separate sum.

As an example only, with made-up figures: if you miss one implant or aligner enquiry a month, one in five of those callers would have gone ahead with you, and the treatment is worth £2,500 to the practice, that's £500 a month or £6,000 a year. Use your own price list, and the conversion rate from your treatment coordinator's records.

These callers often ring in the evening, after reading your website. Our guide to out-of-hours dental calls covers that window.

Mostly empty chairs. A patient who can't get through to cancel or move an appointment either doesn't turn up or tells you too late for anyone else to take the slot.

As an example only: if two late cancellations a week reach you too late to refill, at £50 a hygiene appointment, that's £100 a week or £5,200 a year. Answering those calls doesn't stop people cancelling, but it gives you the chance to offer the slot to someone on your cancellation list.

Recalls work the same way. NICE guidance sets recall intervals by each patient's risk, so a patient returning a recall reminder is ringing at a time your practice chose. If that call goes unanswered, the recall can slip by months.

New patients, private treatment enquiries and short-notice cancellations. Routine questions from existing patients cost the least, because those callers almost always try again.

Beyond the money, there's reputation. In BT Business's 2026 survey of 2,000 UK adults, 58% said they'd tell friends and family to avoid a business that didn't pick up. For a practice that grows by recommendation, that matters.

From your phone system's call log. Two normal weeks show the pattern.

1. 1Export two weeks of call history from your phone system or provider's portal.
2. 2Filter for unanswered calls and calls that went to voicemail.
3. 3Split them by time: the first hour after opening, lunch, after closing and at weekends.
4. 4Mark calls from numbers that aren't on your patient list. Those are your likely new patients.
5. 5Count how many you called back, and how many of those booked.
6. 6Note any cancellations you heard about too late to refill.

Most practices find the gaps at the same moments: the first half hour after opening, when pain calls stack up, lunch, when the desk is short, and the evening. Our dental answering service guide compares ways to cover each gap.

When the income it protects is more than it costs. At £99 a month, Ringzel Basic costs £1,188 a year, so with a new patient worth £300, as in the example above, it pays for itself if it saves four new patients a year.

A receptionist does much more than answer the phone, so this isn't like for like. Our guide to what a dental front desk really costs builds the £28,300 figure from the National Living Wage, employer National Insurance and pension. If your log shows very few missed calls from new numbers, you may not need extra cover at all; a clear voicemail and a call-back routine could be enough.

By making sure a call reception can't take goes somewhere useful. Divert busy and unanswered calls to cover that answers in your practice's name, so enquiries are captured while the desk is with patients.

• Set a no-answer divert, so calls move on after a few rings instead of ringing out.
• Put a second person on the phones for the first hour if that's your peak.
• Let existing patients book simple appointment types online.
• Keep a cancellation list of patients who'd take an earlier slot.
• Have a plan for evenings and weekends, when many patients ring to book or cancel.
• Check the call log monthly, so you see when the pattern changes.

For bringing more new patients in once the phone is covered, see our guides to dental practice marketing and handling new-patient enquiries.