Overflow capture
Overflow calls are the calls that arrive while your front desk is already busy with someone else. They’re not an after-hours problem — about 50% of overflow happens during open hours, when the phone rings and every staff member is mid-task. This is the honest math on how many you miss and what actually fixes it.
Published planning constants
1.8
calls per appointment-day — the baseline our overflow calculator uses.
50%
of overflow happens during business hours, not after close.
7%
of overflow calls handled converted to a booked appointment in a sampled deployment (11 of 152).
These constants are the single source of truth behind the public calculators and mirror the product’s own logic. Plug in your appointment-day count to estimate your own number — no login, estimate only.
If calls pile up because the desk is understaffed at predictable peaks — morning rush, post-lunch — the fix may be a schedule change or a second person on phones, not software. Capture tools won’t fix a chronically short desk.
If your team is fully staffed and still can’t answer every call during real peaks (check-in, checkout, insurance, and a ringing phone colliding), the calls aren’t a staffing gap — they’re uncaptured demand. That’s what an overflow capture layer is for.
Overflow calls are inbound patient calls that arrive while your front desk is already busy — on another line, checking a patient in, or handling insurance. They ring out or go to voicemail not because nobody is working, but because everyone is. Roughly half of overflow happens during business hours, not just after close.
It depends on volume, but our overflow model uses about 1.8 calls per appointment-day as a planning baseline, and assumes about half of overflow occurs during open hours. The /calculators/overflow tool turns your own appointment-day count into an estimate using these published constants — no login, estimate only.
Some of them. In a sampled deployment, roughly 7% of overflow calls Xona handled converted to a booked appointment, with many more captured as staff follow-ups instead of lost to voicemail. Answering is the start; the booked, kept appointment is the outcome Xona measures against your dental software.
No. An answering service takes a message. Overflow capture inside Xona sorts the call by intent, books where the clinic has approved it, and leaves a staff-ready summary for the rest — then it’s one workflow inside a Leakage Prevention System that also handles recall, cancellations, and open chairs.
The other leak
This page covers patients you already have. There’s a first leak too — patients who never find you.
Reviews, your website, and whether AI assistants like ChatGPT can read it. The scan is free; Xona AEO fixes it without a rebuild.