Over one-quarter of phone calls to businesses don’t get answered, according to Invoca customer platform data. No matter what business you’re in, missing customer calls has a big impact on the bottom line. In healthcare, missing calls from patients may have the greatest repercussions.
Whether the call is to book an appointment or ask a question, not connecting with the provider can impact the quality of care the patient receives. The result of unanswered calls extends beyond the patient, too. In healthcare, about 80% of appointments are booked on the phone. If calls aren’t getting answered, the provider is missing out on appointments being booked and the patient gets a sub-par experience.
This is why many healthcare organizations are now using solutions like Invoca to gain a competitive advantage and provide better patient experiences. The AI-powered technology can route calls based on intent to reduce hold times and transfers, as well as enable digital media optimization based on caller data.
What’s more, by understanding patient conversations in every call, conversation intelligence uncovers what is driving phone calls and phone call conversions so that providers can significantly reduce wasted marketing spend and demonstrate tangible results. Capturing calls, call drivers and call outcomes is the key to happier patients and more profitable providers.
Below, we'll break down how many patient calls your organization is likely missing. We'll also dive into the key Invoca features leading healthcare providers use to boost patient satisfaction.
How Many Patient Calls Are You Missing?
Right now, potential patients are trying to reach you—and failing. Even well-run healthcare organizations are missing nearly 29% of inbound calls, according to Invoca customer data. Those aren't just rings going unanswered. They're patients who need appointments, have urgent questions, or are trying to choose between you and a competitor who might actually pick up the phone.
Some calls come after hours when no one's staffed to answer. Others hit voicemail because your call center is overwhelmed or short-staffed. Some get lost in transfer loops between departments or locations. The reasons vary, but the outcome is the same: patients who needed help didn't get it, and appointments that should have been booked weren't.
The impact multiplies when you operate multiple facilities or office locations. A patient calls your main number expecting help, then gets transferred twice, put on hold for eight minutes, and finally gives up. They're frustrated. You've lost the appointment. And unless you're tracking performance at the location level, you have no idea which offices are answering calls effectively and which ones are hemorrhaging opportunities.
The good news is that with the right technology and data, reversing this trend is more straightforward than you think.
How Invoca's AI Messaging Agent Recovers Missed Opportunities
This is exactly where Invoca's AI Messaging Agent makes a difference. When your contact center is overwhelmed and calls go unanswered, the AI instantly follows up via SMS—meeting patients in their preferred channel without making them wait on hold or call back during business hours. It's not a generic "we missed your call" message. It's the start of a real, helpful conversation.
Because the AI is connected to the patient's entire journey, it already knows which location they were trying to reach, what pages they viewed on your website before calling, whether they were looking at a specific provider or service, and what questions similar patients typically ask at this stage. When the conversation begins, the patient doesn't have to start from scratch explaining what they need—the AI picks up exactly where their digital journey left off.
What makes this particularly effective in healthcare is that Invoca's AI is pre-trained on your best calls. It speaks the way your most helpful staff members do, uses your organization's language and tone, understands your specific services and processes, and knows how to handle common questions with accuracy and empathy. There's no awkward learning period or generic responses that feel disconnected from your brand. From day one, the AI represents your organization the way you'd want it to—because it learned directly from the conversations where your team performed best.
As a result, patients who would have been lost get immediate, personalized assistance. Appointments get booked even when call volumes exceed capacity. And your staff can focus on the complex cases that truly require human expertise, knowing that the AI is handling routine scheduling, questions, and follow-ups in a way that's both helpful and on-brand.
Troubleshooting Missed Patient Calls
Having visibility into unanswered calls makes it possible to troubleshoot and fix issues. Invoca’s reporting suite includes “Calls by Hour” and “Calls by Day of Week” reports that can be filtered by the new “Calls Not Answered by Agent” voice detection Signal.
This could uncover a staffing issue during business hours, an IVR that’s connecting calls during off hours, or a phone system that’s dropping calls. Once you know this, you can work to address the issue and reduce the volume of unanswered calls.
Visibility into Every Office and Location
As we discussed, providers with more than one location or office get transparency into exactly how many calls are being answered by each location, department, etc. This metric can be used to understand high-performing locations, or to make the case for staffing up or training at lower-performing locations.
Track How Answer Rates Impact Marketing ROI
Call answer rates also have a big impact on healthcare marketing teams. Every dollar spent on paid search, social, or local SEO is designed to drive a specific action: getting a patient to reach out. For most providers, the phone remains the primary conversion point for appointments. When marketing successfully drives a high-intent lead but that call goes unanswered or is sent to an endless hold queue, the return on investment (ROI) for that campaign effectively drops to zero. Unanswered calls represent more than just a missed connection; they're a waste of marketing budget.
Increasing the call answer rate is one of the most immediate levers a healthcare marketer can pull to improve efficiency. Tools like Invoca allow marketing teams to the impact call answer rates have on campaigns. By measuring the specific revenue lift associated with increased answer rates, marketers can move beyond vanity metrics like call duration and start reporting on actual appointments booked and projected patient value. This level of granularity allows teams to see exactly which campaigns are being undermined by operational bottlenecks at specific locations or contact centers.
Armed with this data, marketers can make smarter optimization decisions. Instead of cutting spend on a high-performing ad that appears to have a low conversion rate, they can identify that the issue is actually a staffing gap at a specific clinic during peak hours. This transparency allows for a collaborative approach between marketing and operations, where media spend is synced with call center capacity to ensure that every dollar spent is met with an available resource to answer the phone and book the appointment.
Learn How Invoca for Healthcare Can Help Your Organization
Leading healthcare organizations use Invoca’s AI features to improve the patient experience. For example, University Hospitals increased appointments scheduled by 580% and dramatically improved the customer experience thanks to our solution.
What’s more, by understanding patient conversations in every call, Invoca uncovers what is driving phone calls and phone call conversions so that providers can significantly reduce wasted marketing spend and demonstrate tangible results. Capturing calls, call drivers and call outcomes is the key to happier patients and more profitable providers.
