Answering service for UK cosmetic and aesthetic clinics

The enquiry that has been building for months

Aesthetic patients do not decide quickly. They research for weeks, follow clinics, read reviews, and then ring on a Tuesday evening when they have finally committed to it. That call is the end of a long consideration, not the start of one, and it is unusually easy to lose.

Around 85% of callers who reach voicemail never call back, and roughly 80% will not leave a message at all. A caller who has spent two months working up to a phone call and reaches an answerphone does not try again tomorrow. They go back to the search results.

The timing is the problem. Aesthetic enquiries peak outside working hours, and a clinic running treatment lists all day has nobody free to answer them.

What a laser and aesthetic clinic answering service handles

Voco answers in your clinic name, in a voice you choose, and works from information you configure rather than improvising. On a typical call it will:

• Establish which treatment or area of concern the caller is asking about
• Take full contact details, spelled back and confirmed
• Answer the questions you have configured, such as which treatments you offer, your consultation process, opening hours, location and parking
• Give whatever price information you have chosen to publish, and no more
• Ask the qualifying questions you specify before a consultation is booked
• Establish whether the caller is new or returning, and route accordingly
• Book a consultation into your diary where you have enabled calendar booking
• Send your team a structured summary by SMS and email within seconds of the call ending

It does not discuss prescription-only products

This is the requirement that rules out a general answering service, and it is a legal one rather than a preference.

Advertising prescription-only medicines to the public is prohibited in the UK under the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. That is why compliant clinics refer to treatment areas rather than brand names in their public-facing material, and it is why an answering service that will happily discuss a named injectable product on the phone is a liability rather than an asset.

Voco works only from what you configure. It can be set to talk about treatment areas and consultation processes without naming a prescription product, to redirect callers who use brand names towards booking a consultation instead, and to say plainly that those are matters for a consultation with a prescriber. It will not volunteer a product name that you have not given it.

It does not give clinical or suitability advice

Voco takes an account of what the caller says and does not interpret it. It will not tell somebody whether a treatment is suitable for them, whether their skin type is appropriate for a particular laser, what results they can expect, or whether their concern is treatable.

Those are consultation questions and they belong to a practitioner. Where a caller presses for a view, the assistant says clearly that it cannot advise and that the clinic will discuss it at consultation. Where it does not know something, it says so and takes details rather than guessing.

Callers can be told they are speaking to an AI assistant. Most clinics choose to, and it is a setting you control.

The price question, handled the way you want it handled

Almost every aesthetic enquiry includes it, and most clinics have a deliberate position on it. Some publish from-prices. Some quote only after consultation. Some give a range for some treatments and nothing for others.

Whatever your position, Voco applies it consistently. It gives exactly what you have configured and does not improvise a figure to be helpful, which is where a general answering service tends to cause problems. If your policy is that pricing follows assessment, it says so and moves the conversation towards booking one.

Qualifying enquiries before they reach a practitioner's diary

Consultation slots are practitioner time, and an unqualified booking costs more than a missed call.

You set what needs establishing first. Which treatment area, whether they have had it before and where, whether they have had any recent related treatment, their availability, and anything else your process requires. Voco asks during the call, so the enquiry that reaches your diary is one worth the slot and the ones that are not get redirected to something that suits them better.

Laser clinics specifically

Laser and IPL enquiries come with their own recurring questions: which conditions you treat, how many sessions are typically needed, what the interval between them is, what preparation is required, and whether a patch test is needed before the first appointment.

All of it is answerable from information you have already written down, and none of it needs a practitioner. Configured properly, Voco handles those calls in full and escalates only the ones that genuinely need clinical input, which frees your team for the treatment list rather than the phone.

Patient data and information governance

Call data is stored in UK and EU data centres. Voco Digitals Ltd is registered with the ICO. A data processing agreement is available covering the clinic as controller and Voco as processor. Recordings and transcripts are encrypted in transit and at rest, retention periods are configurable, and deletion requests can be actioned against an individual caller.

Aesthetic enquiries are frequently sensitive, and callers are often reluctant to leave details at all. Retention is worth setting deliberately, and being able to tell a caller how long a recording is kept is worth having an answer to.

Getting started

You can be live in minutes. Signing up walks you through a short setup flow covering your clinic details, the treatments you offer, your consultation process, your hours and the questions you get asked most.

Getting the boundaries right takes around an hour and is the part that matters here. Set your price position, write what the assistant may and may not say about treatments, and test it on your own line with the calls you actually get, including the ones that open with a brand name.

There is no setup fee, no contract, and a 30 day money-back guarantee. Plans start from £49/month.

Related: answering services for clinics and private practices, private clinics, how call handling works.