Empathetic & Efficient AI Automation for Healthcare Practices | EP 17

In this episode of Healthcare Marketing Edge, we explore the integration of AI in healthcare practices, focusing on how AI front desk agents can enhance patient communication, improve efficiency, and balance human empathy with automation. Jakub Grajcar, Head of Marketing at Talkie.ai shares insights on implementation, patient education, and choosing the right AI solutions.

Talkie.ai YouTube + the Scaling Practice Management podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLjcCBHYN2KoABUtTOYaMLQMARJjb_8zS

Ebook – Improving Patient Adoption of AI Agents:
https://talkie.ai/patient-ai-adoption-guide-ebook/

Buyer’s Guide – 7 Must-Ask Questions Before Choosing
an AI Agent for Your Practice:
https://talkie.ai/blog/ai-agents-buyers-guide/

Tim Bouchard (00:04.034)
Welcome to Healthcare Marketing Edge, where we share our stories and strategies to grow your practice. I’m Tim Bouchard from Luminus, a healthcare marketing agency specializing in helping practices acquire patients and grow their practice. Today, we’re diving into a mysterious subject every practice is curious about, but few are actually taking action on, which is AI and automations. Our guest is Jakub Grajcar, Head of Marketing at Talkie.ai.

who’s going to show us how to find the sweet spot where AI handles routine work without replacing the human empathy that patients really need. If you’re wondering whether AI belongs in your practice or how to choose a vendor that actually delivers, this episode will definitely give you the information you need. Jakob, welcome. Pleasure to have you on. You recently also had me on your podcast, which you can plug during this episode too, but great to be here. Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (00:49.788)
Yeah.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (00:55.122)
Thanks Tim, thank you. Very excited to be on the show on the other side of the mic, which is a little bit unusual for me. Day to day, I host the Scaling Practice Management podcast for Talkie, like you mentioned. And we’ve got an episode with you as well recently recorded and in editing as of this moment. Myself, as you mentioned, I’m head of marketing at Talkie AI. I’ve been in marketing for over 10 years now and typically at B2B companies. So previously I was at an agency serving marketing agencies,

project management software and before that I was at a software development company. Talkie compared to those is probably the one that’s the most at the forefront, at the bleeding edge of things. It’s AI, it’s healthcare, it’s AI in 2026 when it’s such a hot topic right now and so many changes happening. So definitely as a marketer it’s an exciting place to be. Outside of that on the personal side, I guess people should know I’m a metalhead and if you have a metal band recommendation I’ll always be happy to hear that.

that metalhead cat lover and I recently recently got into into grabbing some tattoos it was my birthday recently got a new one number three number four is already planned and yeah that’s that’s the tidbit that’s the trivia for me

Tim Bouchard (02:01.399)
Nice.

Tim Bouchard (02:09.474)
Yeah, tell why don’t you do like just a basic intro about talkie like high level and then we can get a little bit more into like topics that surround, you know, what something like AI and this particular platform can do.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (02:22.297)
Of course.

Talkie were an AI medical receptionist company or AI front desk agents, agentic AI. However, I’m saying these words for SEO, right? So it’s in the transcript and then Google gem and I can pick up on it when people search for this. So we’ve been on the market for a few years now. Actually, Talkie was doing voice agents or voice, you know, at that point it would have been called voice bots maybe even before chat GPT. So we’ve been on the market for a while now. A few years ago, we made a

Tim Bouchard (02:32.044)
Yeah, sure.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (02:53.537)
pivot to healthcare and now we focus on healthcare specifically, which I personally think was a great move because there’s so much complexity even within healthcare, within US healthcare to focus on that. It’s great to have that focus. Our agents speak with over 300,000 unique patients every month. So we’ve got quite a bit of scale and we’re already implemented at over 300 locations. So we’ve seen a lot of different stories of how the AI adoption, AI automation story plays out.

I’m head of marketing with a small team joined almost a year and a half ago and honestly been really enjoying my time here. It’s a very dedicated team, high performers. We’re all pushing ourselves to really bring our best at work while still maintaining that level of support. Especially for me, of the newcomer, the onboarding was great. So yeah, I’ve really been having a good time here and I’m really glad to be joining this podcast and speaking with you today.

Tim Bouchard (03:50.414)
Cool. Yeah, so you mentioned like 300,000 interactions every month with patients. I know what everyone’s thinking. So if we could just get the elephant out of the room to start, how does that make it feel like those people aren’t being put off and pushed to the side to talk to AI versus like your typical like front desk solution at a practice?

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (04:12.039)
Well, that’s a very interesting question and I’m glad we’re starting here. So of course, that’s the first thing that springs to mind, right? That this is, you know, why aren’t these people talking with a human staff member? And honestly, part of the answer to that question is that it’s 11 p.m. or 2 a.m. and the, you know, the human staff member is not there. It’s not available to speak. The other part of the answer here is also that it’s Monday, 9 a.m. and all the lines are taken up because it’s the Monday peak or it’s the post-holiday peak. And these conversations

Tim Bouchard (04:25.869)
Mm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (04:42.133)
would not have landed with a human staff member either way, right? And then the third part I would say is some of these conversations, there’s a large chunk of these conversations that really should be automated, is what we believe, to free up the human staff members. So for example, if somebody calls your practice by phone just to ask if they can pay by card or just to ask if there’s parking available or directions to reach your practice, these are probably the conversations that should be taken over by AI. We do much, much more than that.

I should be clear on that. We do scheduling, rescheduling, prescription, refo, conversations, and there’s a slice of more sensitive conversations, ones that require a more complex approach. Sometimes maybe somebody is scheduling for twins born on the same day. Any system would be a little bit confused by that. Those we pass on to a human staff member, but I think the market should be really looking at what…

how large the chunk is of conversations that can be automated. again, it’s not just that because you what you see typically at practices and this was a figure that I was so surprised to hear when I was joining Taki is that in the status quo that we were coming into introducing these AI front desk agents into the market is that a practice is relatively happy if they’re picking up 50 % of the calls that are coming into the practice, right? They’re saying that’s a pretty good number. We’re managing to pick up 50%.

Tim Bouchard (06:01.965)
Hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (06:06.823)
What about the other 50 %? I think with the introduction of AI, we can set that bar higher and we help practices set that bar higher so that we’re not picking every other call. We’re picking up all the calls. Some of them go to AI, some of them still stay with humans.

Tim Bouchard (06:08.95)
Yeah.

Tim Bouchard (06:24.033)
I think that’s important too. Like you’re basically saying like, this isn’t an idea that you have to change everything to an automation or to a non-human interaction. Like there are certain things that make sense from an efficiency and speed to answer standpoint that could be good for patients. And then there are certain things that are just best left put over to the human side because there’s some level of maybe empathy or understanding or even just straight specialist knowledge that AI can’t replicate.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (06:52.923)
Yeah. Yes.

Tim Bouchard (06:54.21)
and you guys kind of know where the balance is on that.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (06:57.733)
Yes. And the balance is going to honestly fall, you know, in a different spot for practices of different specialties, for example, or different sizes, which is why it’s so important to also work closely with the practices and to kind of calibrate. It’s like with any other team member joining the team, honestly, which is the kind of frame of mind that we like our practices to have. A new team member joins, they learn the way that your practice works. know, which kinds of calls or which kinds of conversations or interactions get escalated.

in this case to a human staff member and which one stay with the new employee. We actually give our AI agents names at the practices. Well, we don’t, the practice does. So, you know, it might be called Jessica or Zoe or Rachel. We humanize them a bit while still being transparent. You know, if the call is being picked up by AI, they say it’s a virtual assistant or you’re AI assistant. How may I help you today? So, yeah.

Tim Bouchard (07:49.261)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (07:52.822)
I think that’s important too. Like we’re not trying to like pull one over on anybody, right? Like this is, hey, we, are offering the solution to you. We’re telling you, this is what it is. Here’s the name of the solution. Please interact with it. And of course there’s probably an off ramp, I’m assuming if it gets to a point where it’s like get butting heads almost with the color, which you don’t want.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (08:13.252)
Yeah, there is. We often compare it to like a relay race almost, you know, and some of the batons are going to stay with AI. Some of them are going to be passed on to the human staff. I think, you know, the education portion of it is so important because, you know, like you mentioned, a lot of people come into this whole topic, into this whole area with this aura of negativity kind of built in. And I understand, right? We interacted with the kind of the voice bots of the past where you had to say a very specific phrase, often in a very specific and clear way to even be let through.

Either to a human or you know to a further step in the process thankfully if any of the watchers and listeners have interacted with something like Chad GPT voice or Claude voice or Gemini the conversations are much more fluid these days. They can be much more flexible You can provide a few pieces of information at once so it’s not you know it’s not this rigid back and forth of what kind of the kind of appointment would you like to to schedule this kind of appointment with which doctor with that doctor you could say you know does Dr. Bouchard have any

availability Thursday afternoon or perhaps something after the holidays. And it can take all of that fuzzy input and actually translate it into what it sees in the EHR system that it’s integrated with and propose some valid appointments loss for you.

Tim Bouchard (09:28.621)
You mentioned the educational aspect of this. It’s a little bit. That’s a two way street too, right? You have to also, there’s probably, there’s multiple factors on the internal team side. You have to educate them on how it’s going to interact with or integrate within their systems. What types of things are appropriate to put on the AI’s responsibility list. And also maybe even on the internal side, educating them on how this isn’t necessarily a straight up replacement for them.

It’s an augmentation of their service at the front desk level.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (10:01.755)
Yeah.

Yeah, not just augmentation, but also picking up, as I mentioned, the other 50 % of work or like the appointment reminder calls that often fall by the wayside, the outbound calls, right? That the AI can now do, it can call the patients, ask them if they’re gonna make it to their visit, and if not, then that slot can be freed up. And on the subject of education, this is something that, recently we attended some conferences here in the US. We attended the Athena Health Thrive Conference, the ModMed Momentum Conference,

These are both EHRs, know, they’re some of the EHRs that we are integrated with. Somebody came by to our booth and asked, you know, what kind of support am I going to get if I go with Talkie? Because what I heard from, you know, some other conversations is that it’s basically, you know, a platform that I, you know, I pay for it, I get the keys to it, I implement it, and then I’m kind of left with it. We don’t think that’s the right approach. We would rather have fewer clients, but better supported because honestly, we’re part, I mean, this is maybe going to sound a little bit too lofty.

But I’m going to try it anyway. I think we’re part of a cultural shift here, honestly, you know, the cultural shift towards AI or actually trying to find that sweet spot of what can and should be automated and shouldn’t. But the sweet spot, I think a lot of people are going to say that there’s no room for it or very little room for it. We’re trying to help practices see that there’s more room for it. know, core to what we do is we have weekly check-ins with our clients. We go initially through a pilot period and we really make it clear again.

Tim Bouchard (11:04.938)
haha

Tim Bouchard (11:19.725)
Hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (11:33.113)
treated like an employee, there’s an onboarding period, there’s a training period, there’s going to be a few cases here and there where we’re going to have to adjust the behavior of the agent. But as long as we work hand in hand, you share your feedback, we share perhaps the statistics from our platforms, how many calls are being automated, what the percentage of that is, then as long as we keep that collaboration going and the continuous customization of the agent, then that can really get us really, really far instead of

just a set and forget kind of arrangement.

Tim Bouchard (12:06.689)
How do you feel like the education on the patient side happens? Because it’s not like you can just train patients necessarily to adapt to using the AI reception and system to get them to an answer point. Is there like a strategy that a practice can use? Are you helping practices do this with their patients? What’s the process for getting patients even used to something like this?

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (12:32.218)
Yes, we do help with that and I’m glad you’re asking that question. So, well, first of all, think what practices would benefit from realizing is that this educational piece can start much earlier than the implementation of the agent. We’ve had these launches, right? Where it’s kind of one day there’s no agent, the other it’s a first line agent that takes all of the calls and that can lead to a little bit of friction. We would much prefer it to introduce it, not even introduce it gradually because that’s the preference of the

practice, you we can do first line from day one, that’s no problem. But the key thing is, you know, six weeks before the launch or four weeks before the launch, send an email campaign, send another email campaign, send text messages, put up a banner on your site, preparing the patients that there’s going to be this AI agent that’s going to allow you to reach the practice by phone anytime you want, speak through, you know, through a voice interface. We actually do text and web chat as well. But, you know, that’s one of the main use cases, right? Voice and phone.

So to just get them used to the idea, and then again, from my point of view, it’s good to relate that to something that they might already know, which is why every time I talk about talking, I talk about, know, chat GPT voice or, you know, or talking with Claude, talking with Gemini, because now they understand what kind of voice interface it is. I think a lot of us had that, you know, initial moment of astonishment the first time we used voice AI and we noticed how it kind of…

Tim Bouchard (13:57.474)
Hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (13:59.362)
very flexibly responds to what we say to it and you can just keep the conversation going. So that’s another piece of it. And another key piece of it is that some people are still going to call and they’re going to say, come hell or high water, I can wait half an hour. I want to speak with a human, right? Well, half an hour probably is a bit of an overstatement, right? But I’d rather wait and I’d rather talk with a human and they do it for a variety of reasons. Of course, one of them is like, I’ll never talk with AI. Of course, these are the most difficult cases, so to speak.

there’s always the off-ramp as you mentioned. However, some other people are just not aware of how much the AI can do. So even if they do get off-ramped or transferred to a human staff member, which is part of our training we shared in the PDF AI Adoption Guide that we could also share with the watchers and listeners of the show. So part of the training is that if you get transferred, if a patient gets transferred from AI,

to the human staff member. The human staff member should then also reinforce that the AI is an option. Did you know that because we just had a scheduling conversation,

Let me get that sorted out for you. But just for the future, this conversation could have been sorted by the AI. You might not have been aware of it, but this could have been sorted by the AI. You can try that next time you call us and you don’t have to wait and you can do it after hours or if we’re too busy. So I think that’s also very key to, know, within the relay race to also for both sides to be reinforcing each other. The AI points to the transfer being possible, but also the human staff members point to the AI being able to handle those cases.

Tim Bouchard (15:33.9)
Yeah, that’s good point. You also brought something up, even just the idea of mentioning separate from talkie or even in vendors, like there are so many things that happen to AI, like and there’s releases that are happening every couple of months and all of a sudden one is the best engine, then the other is the best engine. There’s all these models within each one of the providers. And that, I believe, probably that confusion and quagmire probably

comes down to the vendor level too. Which providers at the AI receptionist or even when you go into things like AI bookkeeping or whatever it is, there’s so many people trying to bolt on right now. How can anyone assess which one is the right one to go with? Because some people just don’t make a move because it’s too much to think about. There’s too many options. I don’t have time to sort through it. I’m just not going to do anything with it right now.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (16:31.201)
Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s a way to sort this out through a voice interface as well, and that’s booking a demo.

I mean it unironically though. I think it’s worth it, you know, and I know it’s a time investment, but it’s worth it for practice managers and owners and healthcare leaders to shop around for these kinds of solutions. And we’re having these conversations every day. But aside from that, aside from kind of encouraging that there’s also some things that you can check on the website or ask, you know, via email or some other channels before you book that call. Right. So one thing, you know, I’ll be speaking from the AI receptionist context, but some of this is going to apply to other

Tim Bouchard (16:37.175)
There you go.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (17:07.055)
AI solutions as well. So one point is EHR integration, for example. The philosophy we have at Taki is that it

Shouldn’t be necessary day to day to use the talkie platform. It should live in the EHR that’s already being used every day It should plug in to Athena one into modmed into elation health These are some of the some of the ones that were integrated with and of course talkie.ai visit us for for up-to-date information on that so What I mean is if a patient speaks with talkie the conversation lands in the EHR if they book an appointment the appointment lands in the HR not as a note but as something that’s already on

Tim Bouchard (17:40.118)
Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (17:44.374)
the calendar, the availability of the doctor is booked, and you know, for different types of appointments, practices might want to customize it. So if it’s a specific type of appointment, maybe a first time appointment, this, you know, this, this conversation still goes to a human. We can set that up. We can customize that. Right. But the important thing is, the integration. And there’s different ways you can drill into this. You can ask, is it a direct native integration or is this a third party integration? Because there are these intermediary layers that introduce a little bit more complexity.

also on the security side of things, which is why we went for direct integrations. That’s one specific question you can actually ask here or a couple already. Second is, you can ask for demos, for example, that are pre-recorded. lot of solutions, AI solutions have these flashy explainer videos, for example. And honestly, talk, should have one as well. We don’t currently have a very strong one, I should say. But what we went for instead is to keep it really real and really down to earth. So we record example conversations. You can see live

Tim Bouchard (18:18.604)
Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (18:44.167)
that typically our COO Ada records these. So she grabs the phone, actually calls the agent. It’s a test environment, but still you can hear it speak. You can hear exactly the flow of the conversation. You can see it transcribed on the screen. We have multilingual agents as well. So if it’s a conversation in Spanish, you can see it in Spanish and in English. And then you can see how it lands in the EHR. And rather than a flashy explainer video, it really shows you what would actually happen if you had a call like that come into your…

practice. So that’s another thing that they can ask about. again, I would call to, and you know, there’s, there are stuff, there’s things that are, you know, a little bit more obvious for any B2B solution, like asking for a client referral. It’s always good to ask for somebody, you know, who’s already using it. We have a lot of our potential clients actually calling the clinics that are our clients just to hear the agent and, know, to test it out. So that’s something that sometimes happens, but you know, a bona fide referral call is typically a good option as well.

And the last thing I’ll say for this is ask about the support ask about you know How often we’ll talk about the performance of the agent what kind of statistics I’m going to get am I going to get you know statistics of like how many calls were automated or like what are the intents we call them intents that the patients are calling in with so how many of them want to have a scheduling conversation versus a prescription refill conversation or just frequently asked questions Or you know asking a question. This is data that’s you know useful and interesting for a practice

just in general, aside from the fact of using an AI agent. So if you got regular support, if the AI vendor is going to customize their workflows for you, rather than having you follow their workflow, that’s already a benefit, right? And I think a lot of the vendors would really strongly prefer for their workflows to be followed. And I know that’s the easier way, but it’s not easier for the practice.

it’s already a big change and it requires some change management to introduce AI. The AI should be like a team member of your team. They should adapt to your workflows. So, and we have a guide about that as well on our blog, the buyer’s guide for AI. So we can link that as well for more information.

Tim Bouchard (20:58.262)
Cool. Yeah, the EHR, we deal with this on the website side too, right? You should have as many things as possible directly communicating with the EHR. So, forms, patient portals, and especially the idea that you can have that data also handled off-site too, because websites are a huge liability and vulnerability security issue for practices of all sizes. We have a guide on that too for Luminous, the healthcare website compliance guide.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (21:08.869)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Bouchard (21:28.224)
which anyone can Google and you’ll find it. But same reason. Yeah, we’re just talking about all these cool resources we have developed and since we’re talking, we’re talking about them. But yeah, the EHR, it’s bringing, especially if you’re in a growth mode for your practice, you want that data and those interactions to all go to one source so that anything that you’re doing in and around your practice is connected. So,

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (21:31.903)
This is what happens when you’ve got two marketers on a show, right?

Can you believe we’ve got content about this? Exactly.

Tim Bouchard (21:56.833)
That’s a really good point to put out there too. And then watching for some of those red flags, like not being able to demonstrate proper functionality or not comfortable giving demos even at all. that’s a lot of good stuff. Is there anything else from an evaluation standpoint that someone should think about? Maybe looking at it from an internal perspective. Am I ready? Is my practice ready to…

to approach doing something like this? What are some signs that they might want to look into this as a solution to add to the value of the practice?

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (22:35.597)
Right, well, there are some practical considerations and I think there’s also some cultural considerations for this question. The practical considerations is, I mean, it might be obvious, but it bears saying that if you’re still, you know, if your patient calendar is still pen and paper, then you have to digitize before you introduce AI automation, right? So it’s best if you have an EHR system in place just in the first place, right? Before you think about automation. We’re going to assume, you know, a lot of the watchers and listeners of this show or, the practices this might reach that

Tim Bouchard (22:53.959)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (23:05.511)
you’re going to have something like that in place. The cultural aspect of it, I would say, is also kind of still in the technical aspect, right? It’s good if you have your workflows thought out and if you have, our best clients already have some SOPs in place, right, for their practice and they have their processes thought out even if they might not be implemented in like a specific platform yet.

So, you know, you’ve got your appointment types sorted out. You know which conversations should flow where because if you know where they should flow, then it’s easier to relay that to us so we can train your new AI employee in the right way. And then the cultural aspect of it.

Tim Bouchard (23:43.222)
Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (23:45.25)
you need to be open to actually trying an AI. with this kind of technology, this reminds me of mobile phones a little bit. There’s always going to be this subset of people. I’m sure a lot of us know those people that were like the very last to get a mobile phone. I’m going to keep my landline until they cut it off. So some people are still going to be in that space with, in that headspace, I should say, with AI. And if you’re in that headspace with AI,

No.

Maybe you’ll hold off for a year or two more until everybody else in your neighborhood has it and you’ll be the last, right? But if you’re at least AI curious, then we’re already at this point where this is working. This is working in production for a ton of practices with a ton of success. you’re not even, I should say, you wouldn’t even be such an early adopter to be initiating those conversations today. But you need to be able to just appreciate and prepare for the amount of change that this might bring.

The amount of thinking that you’ll have to do about your processes, you’ll have to actually make these calls of what goes to the AI, what goes to the humans. You might not have thought about that before, but now you can. If there’s at least this curiosity and willingness to go through a two or three month pilot, where we constantly calibrate and increase the rate of automation until it’s at a rate where it makes sense on both sides, then I think it’s a very worthwhile thing to do.

And unironically, think it’s time for solutions like us, it’s time to grab that demo and see what it’s like. You might decide it’s not there for you yet. That’s perfectly valid. But in terms of educating yourself about this, then I think it’s the right time.

Tim Bouchard (25:30.731)
So let’s say someone does jump into this. They start running a system like this. What are the metrics they can look at? I guess even from a patient experience side and from a practice growth side that they should pay attention to to see if the AI is working for them after a certain amount of time.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (25:47.429)
Okay, well, of course you can look at the, you know, the rate of automation. And the first thing I would say is, you know, the rate of automation, we say that, you know, it can go up to 85 % for some practices, but this is not a number that you want to be at 100%. There’s always going to be this percent of conversations that are very sensitive. you know, if a patient has got a cancer diagnosis, for example, those calls should be done by humans. There’s no way that this kind of outbound call to a patient, for example, should be done.

Tim Bouchard (26:02.154)
Mm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (26:17.502)
AI. So you don’t want that to be at 100 percent, But we will be tracking this week by week, you know, the increasing rate of automation of certain processes. So another interesting metric might be, you know, this is not something that maybe a practice would typically track day by day, but it’s interesting to look at how many, because I guess it would become, you know, a new category in itself. How many patients schedule appointments or resolve their issues by calling the practice after hours and speaking only with the AI?

And for some of our practices, it’s actually a typical figure for us to see is that

A third of the conversations or like the patient cases created for example or the appointments scheduled are actually after hours, you know during a holiday, during a weekend when the practice is closed or just after hours like you know late in the night for a pediatrics practice for example, you know if your child develops a high fever all of a sudden it’s really really convenient to just be able to call in to schedule something, something quickly. So that’s another metric that might be useful and you know and of course the number of

calls that you’re being able to actually pick up and process. Coming back to the number of 50 % of calls being lost, that going down is, I think, the most important impact that you can have. You are able now to pick up 100 % of calls. The issue then becomes what you do with everything that comes through. It might be a little bit of a bandwidth issue at the initial stage, right, with so many more.

inquiries coming into our system, how do we actually address them? But again, with a lot of these issues being fully automated end to end, not moving the work, but removing the work using AI, you’re able to address these more complex issues. So I spoke with one of our clients. I think, I think that was already a year ago, gosh. And she said that we have this video somewhere on our YouTube. should link that. What the AI does for them is, you know, first of all, stops the constantly ringing phone, you know, so that’s already like an emotional impact where, know, the distress is

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (28:17.446)
right then and there. And instead, you see a list of, you know, in your EHR, what’s already been automated, so scheduled or answered, everything like that. And for all the rest, you’ve got a list of issues that you can get to in a prioritized way. Not first come, first serve, because the phone is ringing, but you can see, you know, the most complex conversations or the most urgent conversations get to those first and leave the others, other ones for later. So it becomes a much more calm experience for the front desk. So that’s what I would say.

Tim Bouchard (28:19.541)
Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (28:47.366)
there.

Tim Bouchard (28:48.757)
Cool, we’ve kind of taken everyone from the gamut of understanding what the options are to when they might be ready for it, how they can assess how it could improve their practice and their patient experiences. What haven’t I asked you that you want to make sure you talk about before we wrap up?

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (29:05.22)
That’s a great question. call it the insurance question usually on my podcast because it’s the insurance policy. I think we covered a lot. think I would re-emphasize that you should look for real examples of usage and for real conversations. if you know a practice that’s using this kind of solution, then ask them, have those conversations and have a conversation with us. One piece of feedback we do get regularly from the conversations we have is that at least we’re

Tim Bouchard (29:08.671)
Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (29:35.127)
not trying to promise the world with our solution. Talkie can do a lot. AI receptionists can do a lot. But as I mentioned, this number, this automation rate is not supposed to reach 100%. And I think for a lot of practices, this is going to be a relief actually. We’re talking about AI human collaboration, not AI replacing the front desk, not an existential crisis of, OK, they’re going to replace us and we’re going to be out of our jobs.

This is about, you know, a lot of it is about the part of the front desk work that falls by the wayside already. And there isn’t anybody to pick it up and there isn’t exactly budget to introduce, you know, more team members, particularly for those, you know, Monday peak calls where you would have to have, you know, for two hours, you would have to have 30 front desk staff to, to field those calls. And then you can go back to three for the rest of the week. Right. So, yeah, I think that’s another thing to, to, keep in mind here. And.

I would re-emphasize that think in terms of early adopters, you would not be an early adopter anymore to try these kinds of solutions. Our kind of product or our kind of solution is really on the rise. You’re going to be seeing more AI at practices everywhere. But I think if it’s introduced intelligently with empathy and in collaboration with the staff, with the patients and the vendors, then I think it can be really a positive.

change.

Tim Bouchard (31:06.645)
Cool. Well, I appreciate for this being such a complex and mysterious topic that you’ve been really practical about talking about it, which I think is great because I think the audience can pick up on the themes and what to look for and how this could benefit them. So I think the automation side, the blend of human and automation, making sure that that’s balanced. Those are all super important. And you, clarifying that stuff, probably

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (31:25.55)
Thank you.

Tim Bouchard (31:36.093)
made some people feel a little bit more comfortable with at least thinking that this is something they can do in the future to help them. So that was a great recap. Love that. Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit, remind them about your podcast, then just let them know where they can find more about you and Taki before we wrap up.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (31:42.446)
Hopefully.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (31:53.666)
You know, it’s interesting that you mentioned about clarifying and simplifying. Everybody has that kind of compliment that they received once in their life and they never forget it. Mine was from my mom. She did say, you know, you’ve got, there are certain things you can’t do. Yeah, cool. But you can really simplify the complex. And then I said, yeah.

Tim Bouchard (32:05.086)
You

Tim Bouchard (32:14.133)
There you go, we did it here.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (32:16.277)
Yeah. Yeah. And then she said you should really become a B2B marketer. That’s a joke. She didn’t know what that is. Probably still doesn’t. And that’s, and that’s good for her. So about Taki, you can find us at Taki.ai. I would particularly plug our YouTube channel, look us up on YouTube, Taki AI Health. That’s where the podcast lives, Scaling Practice Management. That’s where you can find video testimonials and reviews. So people who actually used Taki talking about their experience and the demos that I mentioned with Ada RCO.

Tim Bouchard (32:20.096)
Ha

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (32:46.181)
that all lives on the YouTube channel right now. As I speak it out loud, maybe we should split the channels to be more focused, but let’s leave that for later. Right now it’s all in one channel. Hopefully we can put the link to that in the show notes. I run the show, Scaling Practice Management. It’s on Spotify, it’s on Apple Podcasts. I really recommend a listen. We focus on everything that would be useful for practice managers, not just about tech.

Tim Bouchard (32:53.184)
Hehe.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (33:06.731)
Not just about AI with you, Tim, we just had a conversation about marketing, messaging, what to pay attention to on your website. Also in terms of compliance with data security, a really cool episode that’s going to go live soon. And then in the resources that I mentioned throughout the conversation, there’s the patient adoption guide, including some actual phrases or scripts that you can use as a practice talking with your patients about AI.

Tim Bouchard (33:16.191)
Mm-hmm.

Jakub Grajcar, Talkie.ai (33:36.645)
already using an AI product that might be useful already. And then the buyer’s guide for evaluating AI vendors, we’re going to link that as well. yeah, talkie.ai, our most active social media, social medium is LinkedIn. You can find us there. We’re still branching out to the others. yeah, that’s what I would, I could plug more, but I always, know, not too many CTAs, because that’s going to be a little bit too overwhelming.

Tim Bouchard (34:02.461)
No, that’s great. Appreciate it. And listeners, for you, if you want to explore how innovations in patient acquisition and communications can help your practice grow efficiently, check out our Patient Pipeline Blueprint Session Offer. It’s a workshop to uncover how you can attract new patients and convert more inquiries into appointments for your practice. Learn more at luminous.agency.com blueprint. And don’t forget to subscribe to Healthcare Marketing Edge on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube for more insights like this.