Case study · Med Spas & Aesthetics
A Calgary med spa with no receptionist
Phil Wong runs Arlo Medical Injections in Calgary. He is the injector, there is no receptionist, and he still works part of the week as a clinical pharmacist. This is his account of what changed when Emma started answering, in his own words.
The clinic
- Clinic
- Arlo Medical Injections
- Discipline
- Med Spas & Aesthetics
- City
- Calgary
A single-site medical aesthetics clinic in Calgary, owner-operated, with one nurse and no reception desk. Injectables, skin tightening and collagen treatments, booked and charted in Jane App™.
The problem in their own words
The phone was the problem, and the reason was structural rather than seasonal. “I don’t have a front desk receptionist, for example… and I still work my clinical pharmacist job part-time. So I don’t have time to always answer my phone calls.” Time away made it sharper, not easier: “if I just want to go on holidays… I don’t want to be charged roaming fees for my phone calls. Or I might just be in a place where I just don’t have reception.”
Keeping in touch with patients who had drifted was the other half of it, and it was hand work. “It has to be done, all be done manually, which was a pain. And sometimes you either don’t have time where you just forget. You think you’ll get back to it later and then you just forget.” A phone tree was the alternative he had looked at, and rejected: “it’s expensive to set up those systems, and the best they can do is leave a message if they can’t get to you.”
What was turned on
Emma answers Arlo’s inbound calls and messages. When the phone rings while Phil is with a patient, on a pharmacy shift, or out of the country, she picks up in conversation rather than through a menu, answers what she can from the clinic’s own knowledge base, and passes the call to Phil or to his nurse when it needs a person. Every call is emailed over as a transcript. A missed call can come back as a text instead — the clinic chooses which fits, and both are included. She answers calls that come in and never places one.
Alongside that, she works the patients who have drifted, on rules Phil sets and on visit history read from Jane App™ — so the reminder goes to the people whose treatment is actually due, rather than to the whole list.
Emma doesn’t see Arlo’s schedule. She sends the patient Phil’s Jane App™ booking link, and the patient picks a time from his live availability. Jane stays the source of truth, and there is no second calendar for the clinic to keep in step.
- Re-Engagement
Brings lapsed patients back with personalised two-way SMS, driven by Jane visit history.
- Missed-Call Text-Back
Instantly texts back missed calls so the caller can continue by SMS and book — no call is ever truly lost.
What happened
I was skeptical at first. I was like, ah, okay, fine, let’s give it a go. Whatever. It is a pain point of mine, so let’s give it a go, see how well it works. And I think the first couple weeks, I think I brought back like eight clients that I hadn’t seen in a while. So that was huge.
This is one clinic's experience, in their own words — not a measurement we made, and not a prediction of what another clinic would see.
Questions
Arlo Medical Injections, answered
Does Emma replace a front desk?
No, and she isn’t meant to. Arlo has never had a receptionist, which is why the phone was going unanswered in the first place. In a clinic that does have a front desk, the setup we recommend is that your team answers first and Emma picks up only what they don’t — she catches the calls that would otherwise ring out, rather than standing in front of the people who already answer them.
What happens when Emma can’t answer something?
She passes it to a person rather than guessing. At Arlo that means the call goes to Phil or to his nurse, and if neither can take it she takes a message and emails the transcript over. Anything outside her scope is escalated rather than answered.
Would my clinic see what Arlo saw?
We can’t tell you that, and we won’t try. This is one clinic — one discipline, one site, one practitioner, one patient list — and what happened there is a record of what happened there. The honest way to find out what it would do for your clinic is a demo against your own services and your own numbers.
See it answer for your clinic
Book a short demo and we’ll walk through what Emma would answer for your services, your hours, and the patients who have drifted.
A demo is a live call with a founder — not a sales rep.