WP149 | Never Miss Another Client: How to Design an AI-Powered Intake Process With Uriah Guilford, MFT
If you’ve ever missed a call from a potential client and thought, “Ugh… there goes another one,” you are not alone.
In today’s Wise Practice Podcast episode, I’m sitting down with my good friend and tech genius Uriah Guilford to talk about something that could completely change that story—using AI to design an intake process that works around the clock, never misses a lead, and still feels personal and client-centered.
We’re diving into real, HIPAA-compliant tools that can answer calls 24/7, book consultations instantly, and make sure no one slips through the cracks—without adding more to your already overflowing plate. Whether you’re an AI skeptic or you’re ready to go all in, you’re going to walk away from this conversation with practical ways to bring your intake system into the future.
Let’s get into it.
Why Intake Still Trips Us Up
Whether you’re a solo practice or running a full team, the challenge is the same:
Clients reach out in a moment of need.
You (or your intake coordinator) can’t answer right away.
They leave a voicemail… or don’t.
They call the next therapist on their list.
The reality? The first practice to respond—or better yet, answer live—usually wins the client.
Whitney’s seen it firsthand in her own group practice. Live answers lead to booked sessions. Delays lead to lost opportunities.
Enter: AI That Actually Helps (and Doesn’t Sound Like a Robot)
Uriah’s been experimenting with voice AI—not the clunky phone trees you’re imagining, but natural-sounding AI receptionists that:
Answer your practice line 24/7/365
Know your clinicians, specialties, fees, and insurance policies
Can schedule appointments directly on your intake coordinator’s calendar
Handle FAQs with empathy and accuracy
Always disclose that they’re an AI assistant (so no weird surprises)
This isn’t about replacing your human touch—it’s about extending it. After-hours calls, weekend inquiries, and those Sunday night “I’m finally ready for therapy” moments can all be handled instantly, with a warm, helpful response.
Beyond the Phone: Chatbots, Texting, and a Centralized Dashboard
The platform Uriah’s using (called Simple Intake) also offers:
AI-powered website chat that books calls
Centralized referral tracking from every channel (forms, calls, chats)
Secure texting and emailing directly from the dashboard
Every inquiry ends up in one place, so your team can track, follow up, and never lose a lead.
“But… Will People Hate Talking to AI?”
Uriah tested that too. He and his team tried to “break” the AI with tricky questions, frustration, and even inappropriate comments. The AI responded with professionalism, empathy, and quick redirection every time.
The key? Use it where it makes the most sense:
After hours and weekends
For quick scheduling or FAQs
As a bridge to your real-life intake coordinator
If the AI can solve their problem or move them toward a session, most people won’t care whether it’s a bot or a human.
Why This Matters for Your Practice
Implementing AI for intake isn’t just about being “tech forward.” It’s about:
Helping more people faster (especially those in crisis)
Gaining a competitive advantage in your local market
Freeing your team from repetitive calls so they can focus on deeper client care
As Whitney points out, the practices that adopt these tools early will set themselves apart and see the benefits in their caseload and revenue.
Show Sponsor Practice at Scale
This episode is sponsored by Practice at Scale, the growth engine for therapy practices ready to scale without burnout.
If you’re tired of wondering where your next client will come from or constantly tweaking your website and SEO with no results, Practice at Scale will build and run your full growth engine. That means local SEO, Google Ads, systems support, and marketing execution, all tailored to your unique practice and values.
They specialize in helping therapy practices put their practice growth on autopilot.
Start with a free marketing and website analysis at practiceatscale.co/wise-analysis. Your next chapter of sustainable growth starts here.
Uriah Guilford’s Resources
Use code WISEPRACTICE to get 20% off any of our training programs, including Therapy Intake Pro
Links and Resources
Looking for support and connection: Join the Wise Practice Community
Learn More about Wise Practice Consulting
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[00:00:00] Whitney Owens: This episode is sponsored by Practice. At Scale, the Growth Engine for Therapy Practice is ready to scale without burnout. If you're tired of wondering where your next client will come from or constantly tweaking your website and SEO with no results, practice at Scale will build and run your full growth engine.
That means local SEO, Google Ads, system Support and Marketing Execution, all tailored to your unique practice and values. They specialize in helping therapy practices put their practice growth on autopilot. Start with a free marketing and website analysis at practice at scale.co/wise-analysis. That link will also be in the show notes.
That's practice at scale co slash wise analysis. Your next chapter for sustainable growth. Starts here. Hi, I'm Whitney Owens. I'm a group practice owner and faith-based practice consultant, and I'm here to tell you that you can have it all. Wanna grow your practice, wanna grow your faith, wanna enjoy your life outside of work, you've come to the right place.
Each week on the Wise Practice Podcast, I will give you the action steps to have a successful faith-based practice while also having a good time. Now let's get started.
[00:01:15] Jingle: Where she grows your practice and she don't play. She does business with a twist of faith. It's Whitney Owen and Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owen and Wise Practice
[00:01:30] Whitney Owens: Podcast.
Hello friends and welcome back to The Wise Practice Podcast You are in for a treat today. I literally just got off my interview with Uriah Guilford, who is the productive therapist owner. He's an author, and he's so tech savvy and incredible. I am, I must admit he's a good friend of mine, but also someone I greatly admire and constantly, I mean, every time I'm around this guy, I'm learning something new, something exciting, but he brings it in such a practical, easy way to understand it is something I really greatly appreciate.
So today in the episode, we're gonna jump into using AI in your intake process, and you're gonna learn so much of what's going on. So even if you maybe are one of those people who are like, eh, I'm still not sure about ai. Look, it's okay. We talk about that in the episode too. And if you just are like, I'm all in, you're gonna learn a lot as well.
Also as if you haven't heard me talk about it, the Wise Practice Summit, I'm very excited, is in October, the very beginning of October in Greenville, South Carolina and Uriah will be there. So if you wanna hang out with him and talk ai, he'll be there. I'm sure he'll be talking about it 'cause that's what he talks about.
So I'm really looking forward to the Wise Practice Summit. You can head to wise practice consulting.com to learn more about it, see all the speakers that we have, the sponsors that are gonna be there and look every year it's life changing. Things that happen for people in their practice. Different ways that they choose to grow things, new ideas.
But more than that, to me, it's about the relationships that you make with one another. People who become friends for a long time. It's really incredible to see. You know, the other day I thought I was thinking I wanted to give y'all a couple of tips real quick as we jump into the episode. And the other day I had a practice center asking me about working with schools.
I. And just a couple of thoughts here. First of all, as we're heading back into school, I encourage y'all to reach out to clients on your caseload that you haven't heard from over the summer, or maybe you've heard from limited amount, or maybe they're heading back to school. Just send 'em a quick message and say, Hey, my schedule's filling up.
Just wanted to see if you wanted to get on the schedule moving into the fall. And then if you're a group practice owner, remind your team. To do the same. In fact, one of my therapists just yesterday texted and said, I reached out to four different people I hadn't heard from a while, and school's coming back and two of 'em are already on my calendar.
It's like, sweet, right? We're helping people. Another thing that's good to do is to visit schools. Now, I'm not really into the drop off idea without kind of a quick visit, but certainly can be done. So we are in the process of scheduling in-person visits for our top referring schools, where myself and one of my interns is gonna go.
My intern is actually organizing all this and she's doing a fabulous job and we take a gift. So last year we took, well, I don't know if it was last year, but one year we took umbrellas. And they have our logo and it had a little tag attached. When the storms come, you know we've got you covered, ha ha.
Play on words. And in fact, you could use AI to do all this for you, by the way. Get some ideas going. That's what we did for this year and we used AI and we're gonna be delivering succulents. To the schools and it'll, we're, we're trying, we're working on the pots right now in little tags, but it'll say something to the effect of, let us help you grow, or let us grow together as we help students.
So that's gonna be really fun. And so the intern is setting up all those, creating our roadmap. And then for schools, there's a couple of schools that are near my new location office that I still wanna have deeper connections with. So we're setting up actual lunches or coffee and, you know, time to really sit down together.
So those are a couple of quick tips as you're looking at reconnecting with schools in the fall and really looking to grow your caseload and, yeah. We're almost there. So anyway, we're gonna head into this episode on AI and make sure you stay tuned for the end because Uriah has an amazing deal for Wise Practice listeners.
So thank you so much for listening to the show. Now let's get started on using AI to better use systems and processes in your intake process.
Welcome to The Wise Practice Podcast. So glad you're here. I have return guest and dear friend Uriah Guilford with us In case you don't know Uriah. I will tell you a little bit about him and we'll jump in here. He's a licensed therapist, group practice owner based in California. He's the author of The Productive, the The Productive Practice Book and Head nerd at Productive Therapist, a virtual assistant company that serves therapists in private practice.
He's a tech nerd, minimalist packer, and a rock drummer. Thanks for coming back on the show. I
[00:06:17] Uriah Guilford: always excited to talk to you, Whitney. Yeah,
[00:06:19] Whitney Owens: yeah. Well you are doing such cool stuff with ai. I was like, we gotta talk about this on the podcast because every week you send me an email and you know, a lot of emails.
I'm like, but when you send an email, I'm like, I gotta open this and watch this video. And then my mouth just like falls to the floor. 'cause I'm like, it's not only that you're doing cool AI stuff, but you're like specifically helping therapists with their problems and making them better in a way that. I feel like so many people are talking about ai, but they can't do it practically in a way that makes sense and you're making it easy.
[00:06:53] Uriah Guilford: Thanks for saying that. Yeah. I don't think I've been this excited in a long time about life and work and all the things. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really a lot of fun and the thing that excites me the most is solving real problems because that's what I'm all about. I like to find solutions for problems.
Whether it's like an everyday like friction thing that happens in your, your life or if it's in your business. Like that's just exciting to me.
[00:07:16] Whitney Owens: Hmm.
[00:07:17] Uriah Guilford: Love applying it to specific areas and specific problems. Is, is the best part. The technology is cool. Yes, I'm excited about the technology and what it can do, but specifically how it can make the life of a therapist easier, better.
[00:07:30] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so there were so many things we could have touched base on today. I mean, so many parts that AI can really help that you know so much about. But we decided to talk specifically about AI with the intake process, how to make it easier, how to make it smoother, things to pay attention to. But I guess before we kind of dive into that, do you wanna talk a little bit about just.
How you kind. I got interested in AI and maybe a little bit about ai, especially for someone who's listening who's like, I think I know kind of what that is, but I'm still trying to like wrap my head around it, or I'm nervous about it in my practice.
[00:08:05] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, definitely. So real quick story take, take you back to when I was 10 years old.
My dad has been an engineer basically my entire life, and back in the eighties he was building and selling and servicing computers. He was literally ordering parts from wholesale catalogs, building computers, and then providing them to people. So he gave me my first machine when I was about 10 years old, and it was like a giant thing that sat on my desk, had a 10 inch monochrome screen, kind of like.
The one behind me actually. And, and it was just so exciting. I just remember sitting there trying to look at this thing and figure out what, what it could do. It was just kinda an adventure to me. So love, tech, tech all my life, and thanks to my dad. So shout out. Shout out to him. So, yeah, I think everybody has some sort of, sort of understanding of what AI is.
It's actually kind of complicated to explain the fundamentals of it, but it's essentially computer software that can do just about anything that you want it to do. It can answer any question, and now literally just recently, it can actually do things for you. So I think, I think of it as a like a superpowered computer assistant.
And, and it can apply. There's lots of applications for therapists, for business owners, and like kind of the, the sky's the limit really. And at this point, and even going forward, it's just about your creativity and learning how to use the tools because they can do so, so much.
[00:09:30] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I'm sure a lot of people heard that and they thought, yeah, but HIPAA confidentiality, you know, we can't be using that in our private practice.
What would you say to that?
[00:09:44] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, it is. It is a challenge. It's, it's definitely one that we've. Been addressing ever since, you know, computers in the internet entered the therapist's life. Right? Because back in the day, we just had telephones. I mean, I'm not actually that old, but back in the day, we just had telephones and we had the yellow pages, right?
And people would pick that, pick up that giant book, flip to the, you know, I don't know, the, the t section and, and look for a therapist, and then they would just call them on the phone, right? Mm-hmm. So, yes, ever since I guess, 1996, HIPAA was enacted and it's been. Somewhat of a challenge. So long story short, yes we can use many of the tools in many of the applications, but we are limited to some certain things.
So even the videos I've been sending out to to my list recently, I'm telling people exactly what they can do and what they should avoid because of hipaa. So yeah, we gotta pay attention to that always.
[00:10:34] Whitney Owens: Yeah, I always appreciate that about your videos and those reminders. And I think you even mentioned at some point about like all that stuff can come up in court too.
Like don't be talking about, you know, your clients or even as a group practice owner stuff going on really personally with your team. 'cause that stuff can can make its way out.
[00:10:54] Uriah Guilford: That was recent news. Yeah. If you're using open AI chat GBT as your therapist or just as your confidant, just be careful because yeah, anything that you say, it sounds like the, the old police thing, anything you say or do could be used against you, but it's admissible in court so there's not confidentiality like there is with the human therapist.
[00:11:11] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. So still go
[00:11:12] Uriah Guilford: talk to your therapist, is what I say.
[00:11:14] Whitney Owens: That's right. That's right. All right, so you are the intake guru, you know, productive therapist, which is a company that's all about, you know, providing virtual assisted services for private practices, intake and otherwise, right? Yeah, definitely. So now you're like incorporating these concepts of AI to make it even easier and better for practice owners.
So can we kind of, I guess, walk through how's AI gonna help us in our intake process?
[00:11:40] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, definitely. So I think the main problem that I'm trying to solve and that we're all trying to solve is how to get help to people faster, right? Yes. That's always, always been the challenge. And from like my first days as a therapist, like the delay from a person reaching out for therapy to actually getting into a session and getting that help, it can be days, weeks, months, or even longer, right?
Mm-hmm. And we all, as busy therapists, we all have the challenge of. Of being busy and seeing clients and not being able to get back to folks. And then when you expand into a group practice, hopefully, right? You delegate and you get an intake coordinator of some sort, and so you can provide a speedier response to people.
But I think we've all felt that pang of guilt, right? When we don't get back to somebody, maybe it's two to three hours, maybe it's two, three days. I've talked to therapists where they're like, I feel so bad. I've got referrals sitting in my inbox or my voicemail that are a week old. Yeah. And those people in that, in that precious moment of motivation and need and, and crisis, they're like reaching out for help.
And if they could get help in that moment or the next day, they would absolutely do that. Right? And I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of people are talking to chat GPT and, and other AI tools because when they have a problem, they have a struggle, they have a question, boom, it's there. So how can we solve that problem better?
Because right now I think the response time for practices varies, right? So sometimes it's two to three hours, sometimes it's two to three days. But even those timeframes are kind of too long, I think, right? I know that you've always prioritized live answers. So whenever possible you want your intake coordinator to answer the phone live.
Why has that been important to you?
[00:13:21] Whitney Owens: You just explained it.
[00:13:23] Uriah Guilford: All the things
[00:13:24] Whitney Owens: people are call, people are calling at their worst moment, right? And I can't tell you how many people say. I called so many other places and you're the first person who's answered the phone, and that's heartbreaking. You know, I, this happened to me recently.
This is not a therapist office, but my daughter has had some backs problems and now we gotta get her in with this neuropsych, you know, neurosurgeon, which is like so intense. And when I called, went straight to voice. And it's like we have longer than expected wait times. It's gonna be a long time before we call you back.
We would prefer that you send us an email for scheduling purposes, right? So I still left a message and waited like two days. Then we send an email and then they call us back. Like it has been crazy to me how complicated it is when it could have been like that.
[00:14:10] Uriah Guilford: That's terribly inefficient. All that
[00:14:11] Whitney Owens: time they're spending and paying people, you know, it's just a headache for everyone.
[00:14:16] Uriah Guilford: That's unfortunate to hear that's That's exactly the problem that I'm talking about. I experienced it a couple years ago as a client, or at least part of a client situation when I was looking for a therapist for my daughter, right? Mm-hmm. And I think a lot, I think a lot of people do this call five to 10 therapists, maybe more.
Right. Mostly get voicemail, rarely get a person. Yeah. And, and then, and then the time to actually get a response. And then basically the time from first contact to first session is what we're trying to collapse, if you will. Right. So make that as, as fast as possible. Yeah. And then there, there's, there's a lot of inquiries that just never get responded to.
They get dropped or lost, fall through the cracks, and that's just a tragedy in my mind.
[00:14:53] Whitney Owens: Yeah. And, and. I don't know if you notice this. I think a lot of clients, the longer they're waiting for their appointment, even though they've already scheduled it, if they're waiting three weeks or two weeks, they're more likely to cancel it than if they were to be able to get in within two days.
[00:15:08] Uriah Guilford: Right, right. So a quick response and a quick appointment whenever possible. Mm-hmm. Those things matter a whole lot. Yeah. So that's the problem we're trying to solve, and, you know, productive therapist exists because I had that problem as a group practice owner. I, I said, I can't do this anymore. I'm, I'm working way too much.
I'm doing all of the things. And so I hired a friend to sit in this very spot where I'm sat right now and answer our phones and, and do the intake, handle the intake role. And then that accidentally expanded into a virtual assisting company that has outsized my group practice. So that is what I've been focused on for at least eight years or so.
And for the longest time I, we've been able to give people a really good response time, usually, actually, always much faster than they're able to do themselves. But we quote 24 hours, oftentimes less. Usually it's about two, two to three hours, depending on the workload of the virtual assistant. Right? So that's good, but it's not great.
So when I started to become aware of the capabilities of ai, specifically conversational voice ai, I started to get excited, right? And I've been talking about this for a little, a little while, and I started to get to excited about the idea of people's, you know, phone calls being answered immediately, and then.
You know, there being some sort of handoff process from the AI voice agent to the human intake coordinator to the therapist like this. Mm-hmm. Beautiful synchronicity of like the best tools with the best talent to help the most people. Actually, that's a really good tagline. I should use that. So, and then specifically when I started listening and testing them.
And realizing, wow, they sound really good. You know, like you still know it's an ai, like nobody's gonna be completely fooled yet. So you still know it's an ai, but the things that it can do and the way that it can respond to you and have a a real back and forth conversation is just light years better than, you know, phone trees and, you know, voicemail, which is.
Pretty careful. Yeah.
[00:17:08] Whitney Owens: We're sitting on hold. I mean, just the other day, my husband made a phone call for my daughter's bus. He was literally on hold for an hour and they got hung up on. It's like an AI agent could just,
[00:17:19] Uriah Guilford: yeah,
[00:17:20] Whitney Owens: Hey,
[00:17:21] Uriah Guilford: yeah,
[00:17:21] Whitney Owens: what do you need? So
[00:17:23] Uriah Guilford: then, then the next kind of. Open door or like a light bulb, I guess you should say, I should say, is when I realized that those, these voice AI agents could actually take actions.
Right? So they could actually look at a calendar and book a call with the human intake coordinator that that's when all the, actually all the lights went on, you know, like in the stadium. That's so cool. All the lights went on. I was like, this is it. We gotta do this. So that's, that's my current project that I've been working on, is figuring out how to combine these things.
And we're doing it, we're doing it for my practice and for several others, and we're gonna expand. But essentially the, the concept is simple. Your phone is answered twenty four seven three sixty five by a very competent, trained. HIPAA compliant voice AI that can answer questions. It knows everything about, I'll just use my practice as an example, knows everything about, you know, where we are, who we are, what we do, what our mission is.
It knows what specific insurances we take, how we handle private pay, super bills, all of our fees. It knows each clinician and their specialties. So it has a lot of context. Right? And then most importantly, it can actually schedule a call on the calendar of Tiffany, my human intake coordinator. So that's.
Yeah. And then of course Tiffany does the rest. She does the, the, the human touch, right. And the therapist matching and then following through with entering the client in the EHR and all those kinds of things. So that, that is the dream, and now it's a reality.
[00:18:47] Whitney Owens: Wow. C pretty
[00:18:49] Uriah Guilford: good pitch, right? That's a pretty good pitch, huh?
It's
[00:18:51] Whitney Owens: really cool. Really cool. And can you explain, how does she, how does the AI get the calendar of the person and do that part?
[00:18:59] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, that, that is a really cool part. There's, there's this integration and it's all done in this one software platform that we're using. It's called Simple Intake. So the calendar is actually a part of the, the same platform where the AI is operating essentially.
Mm-hmm. So we set it up, we configure it, we sync it with her calendar, so it has her real availability, just like Calendly, you know, acuity, all those types of things. But the AI is able to look at that and then it's kind of, it's kind of neat how it does it conversationally. So. And, and if people go to productive therapist.com, they can actually listen to some demo calls mm-hmm.
That we've recorded. And one of them has me scheduling a, a call with Tiffany. So the AI just says, Hey, would you know, would you like to schedule a call with our intake coordinator? Tiffany, the person hopefully says yes. And then it goes and checks the calendar and comes back and it, I programmed it to give them four times over two days.
Right. So it's like Monday at 9:00 AM or 12:00 PM or Wednesday at 9:00 AM or 12:00 PM what's best for you? And then you just say. 12:00 PM on Monday Sounds great. And then boom, it's done. And then the calendar invites are sent, reminders are sent. It's all triggered. It's all done and you haven't done anything.
So that can all happen in 1, 2, 3 minutes.
[00:20:06] Whitney Owens: Wow. And do we have to worry about HIPAA compliance with this?
[00:20:10] Uriah Guilford: The platform is HIPAA compliant and there's a BAA that we sign with folks. So Nice. I mean, to be honest with you, digital security and privacy is always a concern. Even if anybody claims like this is HIPAA compliant.
But we're covering our bases, of course, and this platform that we're using has been used for tons and tons of medical practices and mental health practices. So it's, it's pretty solid.
[00:20:29] Whitney Owens: Yeah. And I think it's also important to mention that clients are making the choice to call. Clients are agreeing to go on a schedule, so, right.
You know, they're, they're agreeing to that before they're giving their information. Definitely. Um, always ask me that about using credit cards without someone signing off. I'm like, well, they gave you their credit card. That is consent.
[00:20:48] Uriah Guilford: Verbal consent and, yeah, exactly.
[00:20:50] Whitney Owens: That's right. Okay. I, I love this ai, the AI voice piece.
And I've actually called, I haven't called recently, but I have practiced it. You've heard me practice it before. Yeah. It was really great the way it, it interacted with me even when I got like upset and irritated with it on purpose. 'cause I was testing it and it did a great job. Okay. Now I'm gonna guess there's some other things that we can do to automate our systems, even outside of the voice.
Right?
[00:21:16] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, so the platform, I'm talking about simple intake, it, it helps streamline the entire intake process really. So it's not just voice ai. We can also do chat bots that are AI powered. Basically the same functionality, but it, some people don't want it, some people don't want to call. Right. So on your website they can chat with the bot and they can actually schedule with the intake coordinator directly through the chat widget.
So that's pretty amazing. And then what we do is we replace all the forms on the website so that basically every referral, uh, every inquiry that comes through any channel, whether it's phone chat widget. Form, et cetera. They all come to one place inside of this software so that the intake coordinator can really kinda keep track of every single referral and, and follow them through the process.
And then they can communicate with them by text or email through the platform as well. So kind of It does, it does more than that. But that's like, that kind of encapsulates the, the intake process, right?
[00:22:08] Whitney Owens: Yeah. So, so the chat bot on the website is through your program,
[00:22:13] Uriah Guilford: right?
[00:22:14] Whitney Owens: So it's capturing all that and putting it into the program too.
[00:22:17] Uriah Guilford: Definitely. Yeah.
[00:22:18] Whitney Owens: Wow. That's, yeah,
[00:22:20] Uriah Guilford: and, and it can actually, I mean, it's, it's only limited by how you prompt it, essentially. So, so you can do a lot of different creative things with it. And it, it can take actions, update the contact. It can, it can actually send the person a text message if you wanna send them a link to something.
Maybe like a GFE, I don't know, something like that.
[00:22:39] Whitney Owens: That's what I was gonna ask about, actually, that was my next question. How does all that, is there a way that Simple intake is making that process easier?
[00:22:47] Uriah Guilford: You know, we haven't quite cracked that code yet. I know you and I have talked about that before and getting, getting those gfe customized and personalized and sent out is, is kind of a pain.
So I think there's definitely possibilities there. Yeah. The other interesting thing too, and we can just kind of talk about a couple obje objections that people might have. Right? Yeah. So like, are people gonna hate this? This is one of my questions too, like, are people gonna really just not like this? Are they gonna get mad and hang up and just be upset that there's no human right?
So my thought, actually, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. Let me ask you that first. What do you think? Are people gonna like this or not? And are people in Georgia gonna like it versus California or dislike it? You know,
[00:23:28] Whitney Owens: that's interesting. I, I actually, the clients that I have worked with in California, people just seem more tech savvy out there than they are here.
Mm-hmm. Faster paced. So I would say it's gonna probably go over better there than here. Different parts of Georgia, of course. I mean, Savannah is, it's a city, but it's also got that. Small feel and slowness, which I enjoy. So I think that I could definitely see, especially older people being frustrated with it.
But I also think there's something to be said for like, if it's not answering during the day and it's after hours, to me, there's something different about that. You know, if I'm calling a place of business and I'm getting an ai, I'd be like, wait, but I'm calling during the day, who's not working? You know?
Even though in reality, that's what the world's gonna get to eventually, you know? But right now I think people would be that way. And I think a, a generational thing, right? Older people. I hear my mother all the time with my, my brother took over her business. And so my brother sends out emails 'cause that's how you communicate.
My mom's always like, sure, pick up the phone. That's how you make a sale. That's how you do something. You know? And I, and I think there is some truth to that at times, but it was just such a generational difference there that they wanna call, they wanna get some money on the phone and that kind of a thing.
So I, yeah, I think that one way, and maybe you've already figured this out, I'm sure you have, but is this idea of when they call, Hey, my name, do they have a name? Do they give a name as the AI bot?
[00:24:54] Uriah Guilford: I I Do you, I think you should choose that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's fine.
[00:24:57] Whitney Owens: Okay. So my name is Sherry and I answer the phone for Water's edge counseling when there's not a live person available to take a call.
'cause we wanna serve you. Absolute. Something like that. Absolutely. This is after hours, so we wanna make sure that you're getting an answer from somebody while we're sleeping.
[00:25:15] Uriah Guilford: I like the idea of disclosing that it's an ai, you know. Agent Assistant is what is what I say. So like if you call Intune Family Counseling right now, it'll say, hi, thanks for calling Intune Family Counseling.
This is Sarah, I'm in Tune's AI assistant, how can I help you? Like that. And then you could, you could prompt it to say, my main job is to connect you with a therapist or connect you with the, you know, the intake coordinator that can help you. So like. Tell the person pretty quickly, like, yes, I'm an ai, but my job is to get you connected with the awesome humans on this team.
Right? So, and I think my, my personal feeling is that if, if the, the voice AI or the AI receptionist can solve the person's problem or move them along towards the solution, I think they're gonna be fine with it. And I think about the last time I saw you, we were in Chicago at a, at a conference and I accidentally left, what was it?
I think I left my sunglasses or something in the hotel lobby.
[00:26:09] Whitney Owens: Oh, you left your, that was my jacket.
[00:26:10] Uriah Guilford: That was my jacket. Yeah. Can't
[00:26:11] Whitney Owens: act that you, we couldn't find where it was. Yes.
[00:26:14] Uriah Guilford: I was really upset about losing my jacket and so I, I, we were out walking around and I called the hotel and an AI assistant picked up and I was like, oh, interesting.
Okay. Talking to an ai and I told it what my, my problem was. And it, it pretty quickly, it, you know, obviously a common problem for people staying at a hotel, right. Lost and found. So it said, it looks like you're, you know, looking for your lost item. I'm gonna text you a link to our lost and found system so you can put in a, you know, a request or whatever.
So it texted me a link and said, thanks very much, bye. And then I looked on my phone, clicked the link, and then ended up finding my jacket. So I was like, problem solved. Did I need a human to do that? No. Would it maybe have been nice? Sure. But problem solved, right? So I think if people get the help that they're looking for, they're gonna be just fine.
And then, like you said, after hours, you know, over the weekend if people are calling and they get something that's interactive, they think like, oh, this is, well, it's better than a voicemail. 'cause a voicemail message is impersonal and robotic too. Right? Or not robotic, but like it's just not a person.
[00:27:17] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think there's something important to be said for like, this is what's gonna take your practice to the next level. You know, competitive advantage. There's absolutely, yeah. And there's just so much. It's funny, my normal tendency about things is like, I don't wanna deal with that. Right? But when AI started, I was like, I did that for like a week, and then I was like, I gotta get over this.
This is happening. You know? And the more I can integrate this into my practice, I'm gonna get ahead. And so I guess, is there anything else you would say to someone who's listening that's like, that's not all necessary? I like sticking to the nuts and bolts of what I do.
[00:27:50] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, I talked to one of our members that we've been working with for a while and she said that it was, it's, it sounded amazing.
She was interested, but then she just decided that, that our VA team was doing good enough. And I was like, well, yeah, we are doing a good job. But I think it's really going to give a lot of practices, a competitive advantage, you know, because if people in Savannah, let's just say call five practices and well.
Here is the competitive advantage that I already know about your practice. When you guys live answer, you book that client because the first to respond is likely gonna get the client, so you're already experiencing that. But if you were to integrate voice AI into your practice after hours on the weekends.
Even just a little bit better, right? Because if that person's calling five practices in Savannah on a Saturday and you're the only one that has an interactive voice AI that can schedule a call with intake coordinator, boom, that's much, likely, much likeer to become your client. So I think, yeah, it's not, it's not a, it's not something you absolutely have to have or you can't live without, but it's something if you want to be.
Yeah, if you wanna be more relevant and competitive and at the end of the day, like I'm saying competitive, but like if you want to help people faster, and that's what we're all about. Yeah. Especially, you know, anybody who has sort of a faith kind of element too that's like we're on a mission to help people and to support them in a certain way.
So this is just helping that happen even better and faster.
[00:29:11] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that happens all the time for us. It's gonna be about the weekends. And the evenings and just the other day some, we had this client, we were having a hard time getting in touch with her even during the workday. And then it's like Sunday night at eight o'clock and she's messaging if we had some kind of AI bot or something that says, Hey, you know, we can't help you now, but how about I got you down from nine 30 tomorrow morning to talk to, you know?
Right. That would be like moving them along. I'm also wondering about phone numbers. So like I have my phone through Spruce, so is there a way that I could use this software but still use my own phone number? Like how does all that work?
[00:29:48] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, that's one of the little tricky things you and I were chatting about that recently.
To use the voice ai, you have to have a dedicated number for it. And so the, there, there's an advantage to this and it's also, and then it's also a little bit of a complexity, if you will. So like on my practice website, if you go to intune family.com, the phone number you see on the website is actually a different number than the one that I've used for, you know, 10 years.
So if people call that number. Or text that number. Whatever they do, they're gonna interact with our vo, with our AI assistant. But then if somebody comes in and gets scheduled with a therapist and they talk to the therapist, they're gonna get our internal phone number, essentially W for you, which is your spruce number.
So. The, uh, the number that we're using for the voice AI can also be used for Google ads or, you know, social media ads or anything that's sort of referral, you know, related incoming referrals. So that allows you to track things better, but it does add a layer of complexity where you, you then have two phone numbers, one for like potential clients essentially, and then one for existing clients.
Does that make sense?
[00:30:51] Whitney Owens: Yes, it does make sense. So if I call somebody back. I'm calling from my main line, or I'm calling from my AI line.
[00:31:02] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, so with the simple intake platform, you can actually make outbound calls with that same phone number if you want. So then you would have the choice to call from your spruce number or from, you know, from your other number.
Yeah.
[00:31:14] Whitney Owens: Okay. And you can text with that number as well.
[00:31:17] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, you have to go through a registration process. That's kind of annoying. But yeah, you can text back with that number. And here's an interesting thing too, Whitney, I don't know that I wanna turn this on just yet, but I might have to experiment with it.
But I, I talked about the voice ai, I talked about the chat bot. You can actually turn on AI conversations through text messaging, right? So somebody text your practice whenever they text your practice, and then they get an immediate response. It's from the ai, all the same, all the same context, all the same quality of answers, all the same capabilities.
So I think that's pretty cool. It's also a little bit scary too, like, but here's the thing I have to tell you, actually. What was your, what was your response? You were gonna say something? Well,
[00:31:58] Whitney Owens: first of all, I want you to try it, but it reminds me when I went to Greenville to go see the hotel back in June, the Grand Bohemian for the Wise Practice Summit.
You know, you get those hotel techs all the time. Check in, can we help you with anything? Are you celebrating anything? And I was like. I'm gonna play with this. And I was like, oh yeah, I'll be checking in at this time. You know? And they respond, okay, we're gonna be ready for you, blah, blah. And I was like, you know, I would really like a great place to have a burger and a beer with my friend.
What would you recommend? And boy, they had some great recommendations. And then I was like, some of it, I was like, oh, well that price is too expensive or that place is too far away. And it came back with more stuff, you know? And it's amazing. I mean, I get it. It's like you could chat GPT, all that, but Sure.
There's something about it feels. Huh. I'm like processing this as we're talking about it. Like I felt more connected to the hotel.
[00:32:50] Uriah Guilford: Right,
[00:32:51] Whitney Owens: right. The hotel was giving me that service, even though it was just some kind of AI thing.
[00:32:57] Uriah Guilford: I love that. Yeah. But it's, it feels like a, it feels like it's a, it's a little bit more high touch, right?
Yeah. It's a little bit more, well, it's, it's more responsive and it's more, well, it's more helpful at the end of the day too. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:09] Whitney Owens: Well, I think the thing that gets complicated though is if you are also texting clients. Then the client's like, well, is this the AI bot or is this them? It
[00:33:18] Uriah Guilford: could, yeah.
Yeah. And, and when I think, I think one of our demo calls on the website. Yeah. One of the demo calls that you can see or listen to on productive therapist.com. We, we did the calls ourselves, so we asked the, you know, decided on the questions and whatnot. At one point, the, the human, human person asks, is this, you know, is Tiffany a human or another, just another bot?
And then the AI agent, you know, the, the AI receptionist says no, Tiffany's our human intake coordinator. So, and then, which is pretty cool. And then you can also program it to do a human handoff. So basically, if the person ever really gets frustrated and is like, I don't wanna talk to ai, I don't wanna talk to a bot, I don't wanna talk to you, give me a human, then it will actually can take an action based on that request, and then either, either transfer to another number or.
Go ahead. Go ahead and schedule with a human. Mm-hmm. So yeah, that's cool. You can kind of anticipate those, those issues. Yeah.
[00:34:13] Whitney Owens: Hmm. Well that's better than what we normally get. 'cause you know, you're on the phone with the insurance and you're just constantly saying live person and you know, they ain't doing anything.
So.
[00:34:22] Uriah Guilford: Exactly. The one other thing I wanted to mention is the concern about. AI hallucinating or saying things that shouldn't, or not being able to handle difficult situations specifically like client in crisis, right? Or or suicidal client, that kind of thing. And in my, in my testing for my own practice. And before rolling this out to any of our productive therapist members, I, my friends and I, my very smart friends, and I tried everything that we could do to break it, to get it, to go off the rails, to do something or say something inappropriate.
Right. And I was very impressed. We could not get it to do or say anything inappropriate. And I even, I, I generated this list of like a hundred questions. Of course, I used AI to do so to, to challenge it and test it. Everything from. You know, just like clinical questions to inappropriate questions. So like everything from, I think I have a DHD, can you diagnose me to, you know, are you single and can I date you?
Like, all those kinds of things. And every single time it just up, it gave some empathy and then it, and it redirected. The caller it said, you know, that sounds really hard, or, I'm sorry, that's not possible. Or, you know, this is my purpose. I'm, I'm here to help you connect with the best therapist, et cetera.
And it was just flawless. And then my friend even asked it some really inappropriate questions that I can't mention on air, but it handled those really, really well too, like some political questions and some just some different stuff. So I was really impressed with that. And there are times when, and this is part of the training process, but there are times when the AI will give an answer that you actually don't want it to give, for example.
I was testing it again the other day and it, someone asked, no, not someone, I asked if it had, if you had therapists available on the weekends, right? We don't, and it said, yes, we can accommodate that. We're a flexible, blah, blah, blah. So then I went back in there and I updated its training essentially to to say we only provide.
Therapy sessions during these hours. Right. So it's, there's a little bit of like a, you know, training and a, a tweaking process to make sure that it's good. But the nice thing is you can monitor all the calls or your intake coordinator can monitor all the calls. So if anything goes funky, you can go fix it.
[00:36:26] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Well, I'm excited.
[00:36:29] Uriah Guilford: Yeah.
[00:36:29] Whitney Owens: This is fun stuff.
[00:36:30] Uriah Guilford: It really is.
[00:36:31] Whitney Owens: All right. So you've got a special deal for the audience today with the Wise Practice Code, right?
[00:36:38] Uriah Guilford: Yes. So, yes. So the code is Wise Practice. And 20% off of Therapy Intake Pro, which is our training and support program for intake coordinators. So again, all about the intake theme and then at some point in the future when we actually roll out simple intake to more people, we we'll be given the wise practice folks a special deal of some source.
[00:36:58] Whitney Owens: Yes. Well, I'm excited about that. You're doing some really cool stuff and this has been a lot of fun talking through it and, and it's fun to even think like. Man, three months from now we'll be having another conversation about this because different things are happening and Uriah always really admire how you're on the cutting edge of it all, and I feel like I get a front seat to it, so I'm really for that.
So, absolutely,
[00:37:20] Uriah Guilford: it's fun. Glad to share.
[00:37:22] Whitney Owens: Well, thank you again for coming on the show. If somebody's interested in this or just any services with productive therapists, what's the best thing for them to do?
[00:37:31] Uriah Guilford: Yeah, all of our resources, everything you need is over@productivetherapist.com. And like I said, you can click the button that says, listen to the AI and check out our demo calls.
It's pretty interesting. See what you think. And I suggest getting on our email list so you can find out how to use AI to grow your practice.
[00:37:47] Whitney Owens: Yep. Well, hey, every week I'm learning something new from you, so it's definitely a good email list to be on. Well, thank you again.
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[00:38:10] Whitney Owens: Practice Podcast. Special thanks to Marty Altman for the music in this podcast. The Wise Practice Podcast is part of the Site Craft Podcast Network. A collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives.
To learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network, head on over to site craft network.com. The Wise Practice podcast represents the opinions of Whitney Owens and her guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and the content should not be taken as legal advice. If you have legal questions, please consult an attorney.
