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Helen AI Receptionist: Common questions after you've gone live

Now that Helen AI Receptionist is answering calls at your practice, here are the things we see come up most often in the first few weeks, what they usually mean, and what to do about them. If something isn't covered here, get in touch with Healthengine Support — details at the bottom.

What's in this article:

 

Where to start when something doesn't look right

If a patient flags an issue with a call, or a booking looks off, the fastest way to help us help you is:

  1. Open Practice Admin → AI Receptionist → Conversations.
  2. Find the call by date and time.
  3. Click Copy Conversation ID on the relevant call.
  4. Send that ID through to Support along with a short description of what went wrong.

A conversation ID lets us look directly at what Helen heard, said, and did on that call — without it, we're working blind.

Calls and transfers

Patients are being cut off when Helen transfers them to reception

This is one of the most common things we see in the early weeks, and the cause most likely sits with your phone provider rather than with Helen herself.

When Helen transfers a call, she hands it back to your phone line. From that point on, what happens to the call is controlled by your phone system. If your line can't hold callers in a queue, or all your inbound lines are busy at the moment of the transfer, the call will drop.

What to do:

  • Ask your phone provider to confirm your transfer number can queue callers when reception is busy.
  • Ask them how many concurrent inbound lines you have. If you're running 3–4 simultaneous calls regularly, you may need more lines.

If your provider says everything is fine on their end, send Support a conversation ID and we'll trace the transfer attempt for you.

Reception's phone only rings 4 or 5 times then cuts out

This is most likely a ring-duration setting on your phone system rather than anything on Helen's side. Your phone provider can generally extend the ring duration or restore the previous continuous-ring behaviour quickly. If they need help understanding the setup, we're happy to be CC'd on that email.

Reception sees +61870087609 instead of the patient's phone number

That number is Helen's internal routing number. It most likely appears because the original caller's number isn't being passed through to us as the call is diverted — a setting on your phone provider's side.

Ask your phone provider to enable Incoming Caller ID Passthrough on the line that forwards to Helen. Once that's on, reception will see the patient's actual number on the handset again.

Caller ID passthrough not working can also show up in a few other ways. These are all signs the patient's number isn't reaching Helen, and they point back to the same passthrough setting with your phone provider:

  • Helen asks patients to read out their phone number during the call. When the number is being passed through correctly, Helen already has it and won't need to ask.
  • New patient intake isn't working. If you've enabled new patient intake through Helen, she relies on the caller's number to create the record — without passthrough, intake won't complete.
  • Smart Transfers show "unknown caller." Until the caller's number comes through (or they've been verified with three points of ID), Smart Transfers will keep showing the caller as unknown.

Patients say they pressed option 2 (or option 1) on the IVR and got disconnected

This one most likely sits with your phone provider's IVR routing rather than with Helen. The call is still moving through the IVR menu before it reaches Helen, which is why there's nothing in Conversations for these attempts yet. It's worth checking with your phone provider what option 2 is configured to do and where it routes.

Helen isn't answering after hours, and we'd like her to

Helen can answer calls 24/7. Whether she does comes down to how your phone provider has set up call routing — for example, your phone system might send out-of-hours calls to voicemail instead of through to Helen. Ask your phone provider to redirect after-hours calls to Helen's number, then let Healthengine Support know if you'd like a separate after-hours opening message set up.

 

How Helen handles bookings, cancellations, and reschedules

A patient says they booked through Helen but the appointment isn't in your PMS

In the rare cases this happens, it's because Helen confirmed the booking to the patient but our integration didn't write it back to your PMS. Don't dismiss it — please:

  1. Grab the conversation ID and the patient's name.
  2. Send it to Support straight away.
  3. In the meantime, treat the appointment as real and place it manually if needed, so the patient isn't turned away.

We will trace the booking on our side and confirm what happened. Same applies the other way: if a patient says Helen cancelled their appointment but it's still in your book, we want the conversation ID. This pattern can happen with recall appointments specifically.

Helen sent a reminder for the original appointment time, but we'd already moved it in the PMS

When reception manually moves an appointment in the PMS, Helen doesn't always pick up the new time straight away. If a patient calls to ask what their appointment time is, Helen will read out the booking as she sees it. Until this is fully aligned, our recommendation is to send patients an SMS confirmation from your PMS when reception moves an appointment manually.

A patient was booked with the wrong doctor (similar-sounding names)

If two of your doctors have names that sound alike, or patients use nicknames or abbreviations, Helen can occasionally pick the wrong one. The fix is to update the About section of each affected practitioner profile in Practice Admin with their preferred short name or nickname — Helen reads that field when matching what the patient said.

 

Helen's voice and conversation style

Patients say Helen sounds rude or abrupt

Helen uses a single fixed voice and we don't currently have controls over tone, pace, or warmth. What gets described as "abrupt" is usually a combination of brief replies and the way she handles pauses.

What helps:

  • If you can, ask the patient to leave detailed feedback (or place a follow-up test call themselves) — specifics let us take real moments back to product.
  • If you're on Helen-First, a friendly opening message should always be set at the start of the call — it's a standard part of a Helen-First setup, since every caller reaches Helen first. If you don't have one in place yet, talk to your CSM about getting one set up.

Helen doesn't seem to understand patients with strong accents, or struggles with names and dates of birth

This can be a real challenge for practices with a high proportion of non-English-speaking patients. A few things help:

  • Add an opening message that asks the patient to speak slowly and clearly.
  • If your patient base predominantly speaks another language, ask your CSM whether your Helen instance can be configured for that language. Helen currently supports more than 30 languages.

Helen told a patient with an urgent need to hang up and dial triple zero

This is intentional. Helen has clinical safety rules built in - if she detects an emergency or urgent symptoms, she will direct the patient to dial triple zero or go to an emergency department, and offer to transfer them to your reception team. This rule cannot be turned off. If a specific call concerns you, please send us the conversation ID so we can review it.

Helen ended the call right after the patient finished: "Thanks for your call, please provide feedback"

When Helen has finished what the caller asked for, she'll ask them to rate the call from 1 to 5 and then end the call. This is by design. If a patient still had more to ask, encourage them to call back or press to be transferred to reception during the call.

 

Reviewing past calls

Every Helen call is available to you in Practice Admin → AI Receptionist → Conversations.

  • Use the date and time filter in the top right to narrow down to a specific call.
  • Open any conversation to read the full transcript.
  • Use Copy Conversation ID when raising anything with Healthengine Support.

For an overall view of how Helen is performing, Practice Admin → AI Receptionist → Insights shows your handled rate, transfer rate, CSAT scores, and call volume.

 

Keeping an eye on your dashboard

It's worth checking your Practice Admin → AI Receptionist → Insights dashboard regularly — it's a quick way to confirm calls are actually reaching Helen.

The key one to watch is your incoming call count. If it shows 0 for a full day when you'd normally expect calls, it usually means your phone provider has stopped routing calls through to Helen. Contact them as soon as possible to get routing restored, and let Healthengine Support know if you'd like a hand confirming what's happening.

 

When to contact us, and when to contact your phone provider

Contact your phone provider for Contact Healthengine Support for
Calls dropping on transfer to reception, ring duration, caller ID not passing through, IVR menu routing, SIP trunk setup, adding more lines, after-hours routing. Anything Helen said, did, or didn't do during a call (with a conversation ID), bookings or cancellations not landing in your PMS, intent / blacklist configuration, doctor profiles not appearing, opening messages and policy messages.

 

Getting in touch

  • If you need additional technical support, please read this article to know how to reach out to us.
  • For anything related to your account, pricing, or scope, please reach out to your dedicated Customer Success Manager.