Meet Ivy: our new AI receptionist

Meet Ivy: our new AI receptionist (and why we’re trialling her)

If you’ve tried calling us lately, you might’ve noticed it hasn’t always gone smoothly.

We’ve been using a virtual reception team to handle our calls, but over the past few months we’ve seen a big dip in service quality. Calls being missed. Long wait times. Patients being given the wrong advice - or sometimes no advice at all. It’s been frustrating for us and even more frustrating for those of you trying to get help.

So we’ve made a bold change.

We’re now trialling a new AI reception service called Ivy, built by Verbalise.ai. But before you picture a half-baked chatbot throwing out generic answers - let me stop you there. Ivy’s not that. We’ve put a huge amount of work in behind the scenes to make this work properly.

Ivy has been extensively trained on all things Southampton Physio:

• She can answer almost every common question about our services, team, pricing, insurance and clinic locations.

• She knows how to book, reschedule or cancel your appointment in real time.

• She can explain which treatment might be the best fit for your issue, what to expect in your first session and how to prepare.

• She can even give proper directions using real-world landmarks (e.g. “Turn left at the climbing gym mural and head through the blue door”).

• And she’s available 24/7 - which means no more sitting in phone queues or waiting for a reply during clinic hours.

Now, we know AI isn’t perfect. Ivy will make mistakes. But frankly, our old system was making plenty of those too - and we believe Ivy can offer faster, more accurate help in most situations. That said, if you ever get stuck or just prefer to speak to a human, you can always request a callback and one of our team will get in touch.

This is a trial. We’re not locked in. If it doesn’t work - and people don’t get on with it - we’ll change course. But we’re hopeful, and we’d really value your feedback.

Tried using Ivy? Let us know what worked, what didn’t and whether you'd be happy to keep using her in future.