Compare your performance to healthcare industry peers using anonymized insights captured by Invoca's AI across behavioral health and rehab, dental, eye care, hearing, hospitals, and physical therapy. Whether you're a CMO maximizing digital marketing ROI, a patient access leader working to convert more callers, or a CX professional focused on the patient experience, these benchmarks give you a baseline to measure against.

Be sure to try the interactive calculator ↓ at the end of this report to see how even small increases in your call conversion performance can move revenue.

At a glance

Research Highlights

Here's a snapshot of the healthcare benchmarks. See anything that surprises you? Keep reading to see how the numbers break down across sub-industries and channels.

54%

of callers to healthcare organizations speak with a person

43%

of calls from digital marketing are leads

45%

of those leads convert on the call

43%

of healthcare organizations don't ask patients to book an appointment

Section 01

Call Answer Rates

A prospective patient who's spent days comparing providers finally calls to book a consultation, a first visit, or a procedure they've been putting off. Marketing did its job and got the phone to ring. If that call goes unanswered, the budget that drove it is wasted, and the patient calls the next practice on their list.

54%

of callers to healthcare organizations speak with a person

Across healthcare, 54% of calls are answered by a person. For calls lasting longer than 15 seconds — which filters out misdials and quick hangups — the answer rate is 65%. For calls over 30 seconds, it's 72%. These thresholds provide a clearer picture of how well organizations connect with patients who are genuinely trying to reach them.

54%

All Inbound Calls

65%

Calls Over 15 Seconds

72%

Calls Over 30 Seconds

Answer rates vary across healthcare sub-industries, ranging from 45% to 68%. Review the benchmark for your segment below. If your answer rates fall significantly below it, that gap points to revenue and patients slipping away through routing, process, or staffing issues at the front desks and contact centers fielding the calls.

Call answer rates by sub-industry

Tactics to Improve Call Answer Rates

If your answer rates trail the benchmark for your segment, these four moves help close the gap.

1
Deploy AI agents to engage callers 24/7
Patients call early, after hours, and on weekends — often the moment they decide to act. AI-powered voice and SMS agents can engage callers around the clock, so a patient ready to book doesn't go elsewhere when the front desk is closed or the phones are backed up. When a caller can't reach a person, an AI agent can answer common questions, capture intent, schedule a callback, or book an appointment by text. This is the single biggest lever for improving answer rates and speed-to-lead.
2
Use missed-call data to inform staffing
Pinpoint the days and times when missed calls spike — Monday mornings, the lunch hour, the post-work rush — then compare those windows against call volume to find where you're understaffed. Adjust schedules so people are available when patients are calling.
3
Pause ads when you're closed
If a location can't help patients during off-hours, consider pausing the paid campaigns driving high call volume into those windows — unless an AI agent is handling them. There's little reason to pay for calls no one can answer.
4
Fix site issues causing unnecessary calls
Some calls happen only because the website didn't answer a basic question — hours, insurance accepted, what to bring to a first visit. When patients repeatedly call asking what the site should already tell them, fix the content or scheduling experience. Fewer low-value calls mean your team can focus on the patients who are ready to book.

Section 02

Phone Lead and Conversion Rates

Knowing which calls are real opportunities to book a patient is how you connect marketing spend to revenue. Across healthcare, 43% of calls answered by a person are leads, and 45% of those leads convert on the call.

43%

of answered calls are leads

45%

of leads convert on the call

For marketing leaders, this is the foundation for calculating true campaign performance and return on ad spend. For patient access and CX leaders, it sets the baseline for how effectively your teams turn phone leads into booked appointments, and where coaching pays off.

Phone lead and conversion rates by sub-industry

Answered calls that are leads

Leads that convert

Phone lead and conversion rates by marketing channel

Looking at lead and conversion rates by channel shows where your spend is actually producing booked appointments, and whether a channel is better at driving top-of-funnel leads or bottom-of-funnel conversions.

Answered calls that are leads

Leads that convert

A note on volume: percentages alone don't tell the full story

Paid search drives the highest volume of calls, leads, and conversions of any paid channel. For multi-location health systems and practice groups, Google Business Profiles plays the same role on the organic side. Channel efficiency matters, but so does scale.

New data

What the data shows about ChatGPT and generative AI search

This is the first year there was enough data to measure calls driven by generative AI search, and the healthcare lead rate stands out. ChatGPT-referred calls show one of the highest phone lead rates in healthcare at 47%, on par with Google Business Profiles and a few points above the channels behind them. That tracks: someone who uses an AI assistant to research providers, conditions, or treatment options, then picks up the phone, is usually well into deciding on care.

Conversion is a different picture. ChatGPT-referred calls convert at 41%, while conversion across healthcare channels reaches 46% (Google Business Profiles). The qualified intent shows up more in the lead rate than in the booking.

Here's the important context: the total volume of calls attributable to generative AI is still very low, with no measurable volume from LLMs other than ChatGPT. This is a signal worth watching closely, not a channel to redirect significant budget toward yet. For now, the bulk of your phone leads and booked appointments still come from proven, high-volume channels like paid search and Google Business Profiles.

Phone lead performance by sub-industry and channel

Percentage of answered calls that are leads.

Phone conversion performance by sub-industry and channel

Percentage of leads that convert on the call.

Tactics to Improve Phone Lead and Conversion Rates

If your lead rates trail the benchmark, your paid media may not be driving the right calls. If conversion rates trail, your front desks or contact centers may not be saying the right things to move patients to a booked appointment. Here are four ways to close those gaps.

1
Shift ad budget to what's really working
Use phone lead and conversion data to see which channels, campaigns, and keywords actually produce booked appointments — not just calls. Reallocate budget from the underperformers to the investments driving patient volume.
2
Pass call data to ad platforms for better auto-bidding
Feed phone lead and conversion outcomes back into your ad platforms so automated bidding and audience targeting can optimize against real booked appointments rather than raw call counts.
3
Use call data to improve targeting
Retarget leads who didn't book on the call, and suppress callers who already scheduled or called for reasons unrelated to a new appointment. Build lookalike audiences from your highest-value callers. And mine what patients actually say — the questions, hesitations, and needs they raise — to sharpen ad copy and landing pages.
4
Use AI agents to convert more leads
AI-powered voice and SMS agents can convert leads after hours, during peak call times, and with patients who'd rather text than wait on hold. They answer common questions, capture intent, book and confirm appointments, schedule callbacks, and speed high-intent callers to the right person.

Section 03

Google Ads Paid Search Performance

Google Ads remains the most important digital advertising channel for driving phone-based conversions in healthcare. Even small improvements to your phone lead and conversion rates from search ads can move business results more than any other paid channel.

Google Ads paid search performance by sub-industry

Answered calls that are leads

Leads that convert

Tactics to Improve Phone Lead Rates and ROAS from Google Ads

If your Google Ads paid search results lag others in your segment, consider these strategies to improve efficiency and increase ROAS.

1
Shift spend to the keywords driving the most valuable calls
Identify the keywords generating qualified phone leads and booked appointments, then move budget off underperforming terms and onto the ones producing patient volume.
2
Feed call data into Smart Bidding and Performance Max
Pass call outcomes into Google's automated bidding so it optimizes for calls that actually become booked appointments — not just any call.
3
Retarget phone leads that didn't convert
Build audience segments from callers who were leads but didn't book. These in-market patients are often your most valuable prospects.
4
Suppress non-lead and converted calls
Stop paying to show ads to people who have already booked or called for reasons unrelated to a new appointment. This alone can cut a meaningful chunk of wasted spend.
5
Add your most valuable calls to lookalike campaigns
Build lookalike audiences from your highest-value callers to find more patients with similar behavior and intent.

Section 04

Call Handling Performance

Answering the call is step one. Whether a lead becomes a booked appointment comes down to how your front desk or contact center staff engage the patient, understand what they need, and guide them to schedule.

Our analysis evaluated how often healthcare organizations correctly handled phone leads across six key call-handling metrics.

Tactics to Improve Call Handling Performance

If your metrics trail the benchmark — or you don't have this level of insight into how calls are handled — here's where to start.

1
Use AI to score call handling performance
AI-powered call scoring gives you objective analytics on 100% of calls, so you can measure performance against the metrics that matter and catch patterns you'd otherwise miss across a busy front desk or call center.
2
Qualify and route leads with an AI voice agent
An AI voice agent can qualify callers and route them before a person picks up, so patients ready to book reach the right person fast and your team spends less time on calls that aren't appointment requests.
3
Pass caller context to staff before they say hello
Arm your team with the caller's digital journey — the ad they clicked, the service pages they viewed, and the searches they made. When staff know why someone's calling, the conversation is sharper, and booking rates climb.
4
Refine talk tracks based on what works
Use call scoring data to connect specific behaviors to outcomes. Find what your top schedulers do differently, update your talk tracks, and coach to it with real call examples.

What's next

Turning These Insights Into Action

This benchmark data shows how healthcare organizations are performing at answering calls, converting leads, and handling conversations. It's a useful starting point for figuring out where you stand and where to focus.

But benchmarking only works if you have the data to compare against, and that's where most organizations hit a wall. Without visibility into which calls are leads, which channels drive them, how well your team converts them, and what's actually happening in the conversations, you're optimizing in the dark.

The organizations that connect their digital, conversation, and transaction data have a real advantage. They can see the full journey from ad click to phone call to booked appointment, and use that picture to make better decisions across marketing, patient access, and operations.

The good news: small improvements compound fast. If your results align with the benchmarks here, lifting your answer rate, lead rate, and conversion rate by just five percentage points each would drive roughly 35% more conversions from the same call volume.

~35%

more conversions from the same call volume — if you improve your answer rate, lead rate, and conversion rate by just five percentage points each

Want to see what that looks like for your organization? Try the calculator below.

Interactive tool

What Would Converting More Calls Mean for Your Revenue?

You're already driving the demand. Use this calculator to see how much additional revenue you could capture by converting more of the leads you're getting today.

Model your own improvement

Plug in your current call volume, answer rate, lead rate, and conversion rate to see the revenue impact of closing the gap to your segment's benchmark.

Methodology

How this report was built

This report focuses on the healthcare industry, drawing on anonymized data from phone calls tracked and analyzed by the Invoca platform across behavioral health and rehab, dental, eye care, hearing, hospitals, and physical therapy, within a broader dataset of over 70 million calls and 600 million minutes of conversation spanning 10 industries and 7 marketing channels. All figures are averages across the Invoca customer base.