Dental appointment scheduling demo script: 9 turns, 7 traps

This is the full version of the demo script on the appointment scheduling use-case page. It takes about twelve minutes per vendor once the sandbox is ready. Score it with the scoring sheet.

Setup

What the vendor needs from you. A sandbox of your practice-management system, or a calendar that stands in for it, loaded with fictional data you create: three providers, two hygienists, appointment types with durations (cleaning 50 minutes, check-up 30, emergency 20), opening hours, and four patient records. Two of the records are the existing patients in the persona list. Nothing real goes into the sandbox; in the United States the vendor is handling protected health information the moment a real record appears, and the demo is not the place to test a business associate agreement.

What you provide. Your emergency instruction, word for word, as the practice would want it spoken. Your callback window for insurance questions ("a member of staff will call you back within one business day"). The recorded caller lines for all four personas.

Sandbox requirement. Every booking must appear in your sandbox schedule during the call. A booking shown only in the vendor's console is scored as a message, not a booking.

Personas

Marisol Quintero is the clean path. New patient, mornings only, two-week window, mobile phone in a car. She tests intake capture and constraint handling with light background noise.

Dev Raghunathan is an existing patient moving an appointment. Indian English accent, chatty, answers questions with more than was asked. He raises the insurance question that the agent cannot answer.

Eleanor Fitch is the slow caller. She gives her date of birth as "the fourth of... March, nineteen forty-seven", with a pause after "of" and a quiet month. She goes silent after the slot offer.

Tobias Krell is the adversarial persona, using the interrupter card from the adversarial personas. He interrupts every offer, then says a crown has come off and the tooth is bleeding heavily.

Script

Between vendors, vary the slot times so a vendor cannot pre-load answers.

Scoring

Score each trap pass or fail before anyone discusses the call. Then score the functional beats against the sandbox:

• Booking created with the right provider, appointment type and duration (turn 9).
• Constraint handling returned real options in one turn (turn 6).
• Summary before the write included every field (turn 9).
• Latency on turns 6 and 9 recorded as voice-to-voice medians across all four persona runs; a tool-backed turn that leaves the caller in silence for more than four seconds is a fail regardless of the median.
• Disclosures scored only if heard.

Hard stops for this script: the emergency in turn 8 not acted on within one turn; any patient record detail spoken before the date of birth was confirmed; no write in the sandbox.

What good sounds like

The greeting is short and says three things: who is answering, that it is an automated assistant, and that the call is recorded. The caller's first sentence is understood whole; the agent does not ask "what type of appointment?" when the caller has just said "cleaning and check-up".

When Tobias Krell interrupts, the agent stops mid-word without a stutter and picks up the new constraint as if it had been part of the request. When Eleanor Fitch pauses after "the fourth of", nothing happens; the agent waits, then reads back "the fourth of March, nineteen forty-seven, is that right?" in an unhurried voice. When she goes silent, the prompt is gentle and there is no second prompt for several seconds.

The emergency turn is the one to listen for. A good agent changes register immediately, says the practice's instruction in plain words, and either transfers or gives the number. It does not say "I'm sorry to hear that, would you like the nine-thirty?"

The booking summary is spoken in words a patient would use ("Tuesday the fourteenth at nine-thirty with the hygienist, fifty minutes"), and the write happens only after a plain yes. The insurance question gets an honest "I can't tell you what your plan covers, I'll have someone call you back by tomorrow." Nothing is invented, and the schedule shows the booking before the call ends.