Clinics · Front-desk answers
MixedMulti-specialty clinicsOne approved answer for every routine front-desk question
Front desks answer the same questions all day from laminated sheets, group chats and memory. These notes cover one approved knowledge base that staff ask in Chat, with a source on every answer, and that routine calls draw on too.
Valnora & Elric team6 min read
Ask any clinic front desk which questions fill the day and you hear the same list. What time do you open on Saturday? How much is a consultation? What should I bring for my scan? Which forms does my insurer need? Where do I park? The answers exist, but they are spread across a laminated sheet, three group chats and the head receptionist’s memory. New staff ask colleagues, and patients get slightly different answers depending on who picks up.
These notes cover one approved front-desk knowledge base in Agent Serve: staff ask it in Chat and get a source with every answer, and Agent Inbound & Outbound uses the same approved content on routine calls. All names and figures here are illustrative.
What goes into the knowledge base, and who owns it?
Five collections, each with one owner:
- Timings. Opening hours per branch, holiday closures, sample collection windows. Owner: operations.
- Fees. Consultation fees, packages, what each includes, payment methods. Owner: practice manager.
- Preparation notes. Fasting before blood tests, what to bring for an ultrasound, arriving early for an MRI. Written and approved by clinical staff. The AI quotes them exactly and never rewrites them.
- Insurance paperwork. Documents for cashless and reimbursement claims, pre-authorisation steps per insurer or TPA. Owner: billing lead.
- Directions. Address, landmarks, parking, nearest metro and accessible entrances. Owner: each branch manager.
Upload the documents to the Knowledge Base, or sync them from where they already live. Keep one topic per document so a source points at something short. Record each document in a content register in Tables with owner, last reviewed date and a review-by date.
How does a staff member ask a question?
In Chat, with the knowledge base attached. A few lines of instructions set the rules: answer only from the knowledge base, name the document behind each answer, quote preparation notes exactly, and say "not in the knowledge base" when nothing matches. For questions about symptoms, medicines, results or whether a test is needed, Chat says these go to clinical staff and gives no advice.
What the solution produces
Chat answer for a front-desk question (illustrative)
Record- Question
- Patient has a cashless policy through a TPA and is booked for an MRI on Thursday. What do they need to bring?
- Answer
- Pre-authorisation approval letter from the TPA, policy card, photo ID and the referring doctor’s prescription. Pre-authorisation request goes from our billing desk at least 48 hours before the scan.
- Source
- Insurance paperwork, cashless imaging checklist · owner: billing lead · reviewed 2 Sep
- Preparation
- The approved MRI preparation note is attached as written by the radiology team. Read it to the patient as is.
Support query from a routine call (illustrative)
Record- Caller asked
- Whether she should still take her blood pressure tablet before a fasting blood test
- AI voice did
- Gave clinic timings for the test. Did not answer the medicine question.
- Told the caller
- A member of the clinic team will call back today.
- Owner
- Front desk, to pass to the duty nurse
The source line matters most. A receptionist reading out a fee should be able to see that the fee schedule was reviewed last month, not last year. If the source looks stale, they check with the owner before answering.
What happens when the answer is not there?
Staff add the question to a gaps table: the question, the branch and the date. The practice manager reviews it weekly and assigns each gap to an owner. Patterns show up quickly. When three people ask about parking at the new branch in one week, the directions document needs a line.
Gaps are as useful as answers. A gap that keeps returning, such as a new insurer’s claim forms, points to a document nobody has written yet.
How do routine calls get answered?
Agent Inbound & Outbound is the Valnora & Elric product that answers and places calls with an AI voice, available by invitation. It answers instead of an IVR menu, and the clinic sets it up with the same approved front-desk content: timings, fees, directions and paperwork lists.
From approved documents to sourced answers
Data · Approved content
- 01Front-desk knowledge baseTimings, fees, preparation notes, insurance paperwork and directions, each with a named owner.
- 02Content registerOne row per document: owner, last reviewed and review-by date.
People · Staff questions
- 03ChatAnswers only from the knowledge base and names the document behind each answer.
- 04Front-desk staffCheck the source, then give the patient the approved answer.
Calls · Agent Inbound & Outbound
- 05AI voice on routine callsAnswers timings, fees, directions and paperwork questions instead of an IVR menu.
- 06Support query to staffClinical or unclear questions become a support query for the front desk.
Relay · Keeping it current
- 07Weekly review checkReads the content register every Monday and lists documents due for review, with owners.
- 08Document ownersUpdate or reconfirm the document. Clinical notes need clinical sign-off.
Anything outside that content becomes a support query for the front desk, with what the caller asked and what the voice agent told them. Clinical questions always go that way. Booking and reminder calls are covered in appointment calls and reminders.
How do you keep the answers current?
A Relay, an AI coworker with its own instructions and access, runs every Monday at 8:00. It reads the content register, lists the documents due for review in the next fortnight with their owners, and posts the list in the practice manager’s chat with the Relay. It runs in Observe mode: it reads the register and reports, and it cannot change a document or email anyone.
When a fee changes, the owner replaces the document rather than adding a second version, so Chat never finds two prices. Clinical preparation notes change only with clinical sign-off, and the register records who signed.
What should you check before going live?
Collect forty real questions from a week at the front desk. Ask each in Chat and have the head receptionist mark the answers: correct with the right source, correct with a weak source, wrong, or rightly refused. Fix the documents, not the instructions, when an answer is wrong. Then test the clinical line on purpose with questions such as "can I take my tablets before the test".
Controls and governance
Roles and permission groups
Admin, write and read roles per workspace, plus permission groups that limit which models, blocks and integrations a team can use.
Run logs
Every workflow run records each block’s inputs, outputs and errors, so a reviewer can trace how a result was reached.
Audit trail
Proposals, approvals, declines and executed actions are written to the workspace audit log, which admins can export.
PII detection
A Guardrails block detects personal data and blocks or masks it before text reaches the next step.
Self-hosting
Run Agent Serve in your own cloud or data centre, next to the systems it reads.
SSO and SCIM
Sign in through your identity provider with SAML 2.0 or OIDC, and provision people with SCIM.
More on how Agent Serve handles access, data and audit on the security page.
Every Chat answer and Relay run is recorded. Roles and permission groups limit who can edit the knowledge base. Keep patient details out of staff questions where you can; PII redaction in Settings → Data retention masks personal data in logs. Agent Serve makes no compliance certification claims, so check health-data rules where you operate with your counsel.
Questions teams ask
Will Chat tell a patient whether they need a test?
No. This setup is for staff, and Chat is told to answer only from the knowledge base. Questions about symptoms, medicines, results or whether to have a test are for clinical staff. Chat says so and gives no advice.
Does the AI rewrite preparation instructions to make them shorter?
It should not. The instructions say to quote preparation notes exactly as clinical staff wrote them and to name the document. Test this on purpose before going live.
What you need
- Current timings for every branch, including holidays and sample collection hours
- A fee schedule the practice manager has signed off, with what each fee includes
- Preparation notes written and approved by clinical staff, one document per test or procedure
- Insurance and TPA paperwork lists from the billing team
- Directions, parking and accessible entrances for each branch
- A named owner and a review-by date for every document
- Forty real front-desk questions to test with before going live