AI receptionist for veterinary clinics
The owner is frightened and the patient cannot say a word.
Belline answers when your team is in a consult and after the doors close. It takes appointment requests, vaccination and travel enquiries, and it gives no veterinary information of any kind — anything urgent goes to a person immediately.
Answers in English.
By city
Where we have written it up.
Each page is about a veterinary practice's phone in that city — the week it keeps, the languages on the line and the calls it loses.
Dubai
Since January 2022 the federal public sector has worked Monday to Friday, with the weekend on Saturday and Sunday and a shortened Friday, and most of Dubai's private sector followed it.
Abu Dhabi
Monday to Friday, weekend on Saturday and Sunday, with a short Friday across the public sector.
Sharjah
Sharjah is the outlier.
Why the calls go missing
Nobody is ignoring the phone.
Veterinary clinics lose calls for reasons that have nothing to do with caring about them.
Everyone who could answer is holding an animal
A consult is two hands and usually three, a nurse is restraining a cat that does not want to be restrained, and the person who runs the desk is the person fetching notes. The phone rings through all of it, and the caller on the other end has no way of knowing why nobody picks up.
Out of hours is the question the whole practice dreads
An owner ringing at eleven at night is not asking about a vaccination. What they need is to reach somebody, quickly, and what most of them meet is a recorded message giving a number they then have to write down in the dark. Getting that one call right matters more than every other call of the week.
The caller is describing something they only half saw
He has been off his food since yesterday, she is walking oddly, something came up on the way home. An owner is not a clinician and does not claim to be, and a phone line that responded to any of that with an opinion would be doing the most dangerous thing a phone line can do.
Vaccinations and travel paperwork are constant and they repeat
People arrive in this country with animals and leave it with animals, and between the two there is a long, exact conversation about boosters, microchips, blood tests, permits and an airline's own cut-off dates. It is routine work that fills a front desk's morning and it is asked in the same order every time.
Where it stops
Knowing what not to say is the hard part.
Belline gives no veterinary information of any kind. It does not say what a symptom might mean, whether an animal should be seen, how soon, or whether something can wait until morning — it does not triage and it does not judge how urgent a call is, because that is a clinical decision and it is not a clinician. Anything urgent, and anything a caller calls an emergency, goes to a person immediately: Belline follows the routing you set, puts the caller through to the number you gave it or reads out the out-of-hours instruction you wrote, and takes no appointment request at all.
How it works
Set up from what you already have.
Most of the work is checking what Belline found. You decide when customers reach it.
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Give Belline what you already have
Your website, price list or brochure. It reads them and drafts your services, prices, hours and the questions a veterinary practice gets asked every day.
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Check what it found
Fix anything wrong, fill the gaps, and set the rules it must hold. Nothing goes live until you have read it.
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Switch it on
Ring it yourself first. Then forward your line and paste one line of HTML into your website. Customers only reach Belline once you do.
Questions
What operators ask us.
Will it tell an owner whether the animal needs to be seen?
No, and it says so out loud rather than hedging. Whether an animal should be seen, and how soon, is a clinical judgement. Belline takes the owner's number, the animal's name and exactly what the owner said, and a person at your practice decides.
Somebody rings at midnight and says it is an emergency. What happens?
It stops being a booking line at that point. Belline follows the routing you set — it puts the caller through to the number you gave it, or reads out the out-of-hours instruction you wrote, word for word — and takes no appointment. It does not ask what happened, work out how bad it is, or slow the call down.
Can it say whether a vaccination is due?
Not for a particular animal, because that answer lives in your records and Belline has not read them. What it can do is read back what you have written about what the course involves and what a visit costs, take the pet's name and the owner's number, and leave your team to look.
What does it do with a pet travel enquiry?
It takes the whole of it: the animal, the destination, the date they are flying and a number, and reads back your own notes on how the process works at your practice. It does not tell anybody what a country requires or how long a step takes, because that changes and getting it wrong costs somebody a flight.
Will it advise on a dose, or on whether a human medicine is safe?
Never, in any form. That question is taken as a message with the animal's name and the owner's number, marked for a person, and answered by somebody qualified to answer it.
Does it confirm the appointment time?
For a clinic, Belline takes appointment requests only, and your team confirms every one. It does not book a clinic appointment itself yet.
Can it quote our consultation fee?
Yes, the fee you have written down, in your words — what the consult covers and what it does not. What it will not do is put a figure on treatment nobody has seen an animal for yet.
Will callers know they are not speaking to a nurse?
If they ask, it says so plainly. It does not use a nurse's or a vet's name and it does not present itself as part of your clinical team.
