Therapist booking assistant for physio, osteopathy, counselling and massage practices

You are halfway through a lumbar assessment when the phone in the corridor rings for the third time in ten minutes. You can't answer it. You have your hands on a patient, and in a counselling room you wouldn't even glance at the screen. By the time the session ends, the caller has gone to the clinic down the road that picked up. A therapist booking assistant answers that call, and the WhatsApp message and the website chat that arrive while you're working. It books the initial assessment into your diary and answers the questions about fees, parking and what to wear. Anything that sounds clinical goes back to you, not to the AI.

This page is for small practices: a physiotherapy clinic with two or three treatment rooms, an osteopath working alone, a counselling practice that shares a building, a sports massage therapist who works from a gym. It explains what Klugon's assistant does for this kind of practice, what it should never do, how you'd set it up, and what it costs.

The calls and messages a therapy practice gets

Therapy practices get a narrow, predictable mix of calls. That's good news for automation, because most of them follow the same few scripts. It is also why the few calls that don't fit the script matter so much.

New patient enquiries

Most first calls come from someone in pain who has never been to you before. They usually ask some version of the same four things:

• Can you see me this week?
• How much is a first appointment, and how long is it?
• Do I need a GP referral?
• Do you take my insurance?

Many of them also want to describe their injury in detail before they book. That last habit is the one to watch. A receptionist, human or AI, should listen, note it and book the assessment, not offer an opinion on whether it's a disc or a muscle.

Follow-ups and rebooking

Existing patients ring or message to move their follow-up, book the next one in a course of treatment, or cancel because their knee feels better. In physio and osteopathy, follow-ups are often shorter than the first assessment. In counselling, they're the same 50-minute hour, at the same time each week, which is why a client losing "their" Tuesday 6pm slot matters so much to them.

Insurance and payment questions

Patients with private medical insurance want to know whether you're recognised by their insurer, and whether they need an authorisation number before the first session. Self-funding patients want the price. Some want to know if you offer a block of sessions at a lower rate. These are fact questions with fixed answers, and they make up a large share of what comes in.

Practical questions

Where do I park? Is there a lift? Should I wear shorts? How long before the appointment should I arrive? Can I bring my child in with me? Do you do home visits? These calls are short and repetitive, and they eat the five minutes you meant to spend writing up notes.

Calls you must not mishandle

A small share of calls are not booking calls at all. Someone describes a symptom that frightens them. A counselling client rings late on a Sunday in distress. A patient reports that their pain got much worse after treatment. These are covered in detail below, because they set the limits of what an AI should do here.

When the phone rings

Therapy practices tend to be busiest on the phone at a few fixed points, and you'll recognise the pattern from your own diary:

• Monday morning. People hurt their backs gardening or playing five-a-side at the weekend, wait to see if it settles, and ring on Monday when it hasn't.
• Lunchtime and just after 5pm. Office workers ring from their desks or on the way home, which is exactly when you're between patients or running late.
• Evenings and Sunday nights, especially for counselling. People often decide to look for a therapist late at night, after a hard day, and send a message rather than ring.
• During every treatment session. A sole practitioner is unreachable for most of the working day by definition.

Seasons and peaks

The calendar matters too:

• January brings New Year exercise injuries and people using new insurance policies.
• Spring brings running injuries as people train for half-marathons and marathons.
• Summer brings sports and holiday-related strains, and gaps in your own diary when you take leave.
• The start of the ski season and the return from it brings knees.
• Autumn brings a rise in counselling enquiries as routines return.

None of this needs a statistic to be true in your practice. Look at your own booking history, and you'll see where your missed calls cluster. Klugon's analytics show busiest hours and weekdays once it's running, so after a month you'll see the pattern in your own data rather than guessing.

What a therapist booking assistant handles

Here is what Klugon's AI receptionist can actually do for a therapy practice today, channel by channel and task by task. It's built for small businesses generally, so this section is about how those general abilities map onto your work.

Booking initial assessments and follow-ups

You list your services in Klugon with their durations, such as:

• Initial physiotherapy assessment, 45 minutes
• Follow-up treatment, 30 minutes
• Sports massage, 60 minutes
• Counselling session, 50 minutes
• Osteopathy initial consultation, 60 minutes

You set your opening hours, your slot interval, a buffer after each appointment (useful for writing notes or turning the couch over), the minimum notice you'll accept and how far ahead people can book.

When a caller asks for a first appointment, the AI checks the built-in diary for free slots that fit the service length and offers them. Once the caller picks one, it creates the booking and reads them a reference in the same conversation. If you work with more than one clinician, you can assign services to staff, and the AI checks conflicts per person. That lets it book "Sarah for physio on Thursday" without clashing with "Tom for massage" in the next room.

The AI can cancel bookings on calls. In chat and messaging it can also move a booking to a new time. On the phone there's no reschedule tool, so if someone rings to move their appointment, the AI can cancel the old one and book a new one, or flag the call for you if you'd rather handle moves yourself.

Answering the questions that eat your day

You give the assistant your own material:

• your fees page
• your cancellation policy
• your insurer list
• directions and parking notes
• a paragraph on what to wear and what happens at a first appointment

You can upload these as PDF, Word, text or CSV files, paste them in as text, or let it read your website's main pages. It answers from that material. When it doesn't know, it says so and flags the conversation for you instead of guessing.

For a physio clinic, the questions it handles well are the ones with fixed answers:

• "How much is an initial assessment?"
• "Do I need a referral?" (most private physios in the UK take self-referrals, but your own answer goes here)
• "Are you recognised by my insurer?"
• "Can I claim the session back?"
• "Do you do home visits?"
• "Do you offer acupuncture or dry needling?"
• "Is the clinic accessible by wheelchair?"
• "What's your cancellation policy?"

Counselling enquiries

Counselling enquiries need a gentler shape. Someone looking for a counsellor is often anxious about the first contact itself. The assistant can explain how your practice works:

• a free 15-minute introductory call, if you offer one
• the fee and the session length
• whether you work online, in person or both
• how often sessions usually run

It can then book the introductory call or the first session. It shouldn't ask why they want counselling. Your instructions can tell it plainly not to. The client tells you that, in the room.

Sports and remedial massage

Massage therapists get more same-week bookings, more people asking for "something for my shoulders" and more people buying a session as a gift. The assistant can book by duration, explain the difference between sports and relaxation massage in your words, and capture a lead when someone wants a gift voucher you'll sort out yourself. It doesn't take payments for gift vouchers on calls.

Capturing leads you can call back

Some callers aren't ready to book. They want to talk to the physio first, or they're comparing prices. The assistant can take their name, number and a short note of what they want, and save it as a lead. New leads appear on your leads page, and on the voice or social Business tier and above you can have them posted to Slack or sent through Zapier, so they reach you without you opening the dashboard. Klugon doesn't phone them back or send them a text. You do that.

Covering every channel with one set of rules

Klugon's assistant can sit on four kinds of channel:

• your phone line
• WhatsApp
• Instagram and Facebook Messenger
• a chat widget on your website

It works from the same knowledge and the same diary on all of them. Counselling enquiries often come in on WhatsApp or the website at 11pm. Physio enquiries come in by phone at 8.30am. Either way, the answers and the availability are the same. The AI appointment booking feature page explains the booking engine in more detail.

What it must hand to a clinician

This is the most important section on the page. A therapist booking assistant handles admin. It must never handle anything clinical, and you set it up that way on purpose.

No clinical advice, ever

Callers will ask clinical questions, because that is what people do when they finally get through to a clinic:

• "Should I use ice or heat?"
• "Is it safe to keep running on it?"
• "Do you think it's sciatica?"
• "My osteopath cracked my neck last week and now I've got a headache. Is that normal?"
• "Should I stop taking my antidepressants before our first session?"

The assistant's job is to say that it can't advise on that, offer to book an appointment, and flag the conversation so a clinician sees it. You write that into its instructions in plain words, and you test it before going live by asking it exactly these questions.

Even a sensible-sounding general answer is a problem. A patient who hears "ice usually helps" from your clinic's phone line hears it as your clinic's advice. You are the one accountable for it, under your regulator's standards.

Crisis disclosures

Counsellors and psychotherapists know this one well, and physios meet it more often than people expect. A caller, or someone sending a WhatsApp message at 2am, may say they are thinking of ending their life, or that they're not safe.

An AI receptionist must not try to counsel that person. Klugon cannot transfer a call to a person, so the AI cannot put them through to you either. What it should do, and what you instruct it to do, is:

1. Tell them plainly that if they are in immediate danger they should call 999 in the UK (911 in the US).
2. Give them a free, round-the-clock crisis line. In the UK and Ireland that's Samaritans on 116 123, which is free to call from any phone and open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. In the US it's the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988, or use its online chat, at any time.
3. Flag the conversation for your team, so it appears with a "Needs a person" banner in your inbox and is posted to Slack or Zapier if you've connected them.

That is the whole of its role. It shouldn't ask probing questions, offer reassurance about outcomes, or promise that you'll call back at a particular time. It can't guarantee that.

Be clear-eyed about what the flag does. It's a notification to you. It doesn't ring your mobile, and the AI keeps talking after it's raised. If your practice has a duty-of-care policy for out-of-hours contact, the policy still runs your response. The assistant points the person to emergency help immediately, which is better than an unanswered phone or a voicemail that won't be heard until Monday.

Red flags in physio and osteopathy

Musculoskeletal practice has its own urgent symptoms, the ones you were trained to screen for, for example:

• new problems controlling the bladder or bowel with back pain
• numbness in the saddle area
• sudden weakness in both legs
• chest pain
• a sudden, severe headache unlike any before

The AI must not triage these. It isn't qualified to decide what's urgent, and it shouldn't try. Your instructions should say that if a caller describes anything like this, the assistant tells them to call 999 or go to A&E now, and flags the conversation. It shouldn't try to judge whether the symptom "counts".

Complaints, safeguarding and clinical records

Hand these to a person as well:

• Complaints about treatment. These need you, not an AI apology.
• Safeguarding concerns. A child or vulnerable adult at risk is your safeguarding lead's call.
• Requests for clinical notes or letters. A subject access request for notes needs identity checks and your judgement.
• Insurer or solicitor calls about a claim. They want facts from the clinical record, which the AI doesn't have and shouldn't.
• Questions about a specific patient. The assistant shouldn't confirm whether someone is a patient of yours to a third party who rings asking.

What "hands over" really means

Klugon's handover marks the conversation as escalated, shows it in your inbox with a "Needs a person" banner, and sends a notification to Slack or Zapier if you've connected one (those connections need the voice or social Business tier or above). It doesn't transfer the call, and it doesn't pause the AI. On WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger you can reply to the person from the inbox yourself, within Meta's 24-hour messaging window. Phone calls and website chats can't be replied to from the inbox, so for those you call the person back.

Sample conversations

These are samples written for this page. The practice, the people and the details are made up, and on a real line the AI's voice is AI-generated.

Sample phone call: a new physio patient

A sample call. The practice, Harbourline Physiotherapy in Bristol, is made up.

Notice what the AI did and didn't do. It booked, it quoted the fee, and it gave the parking note from the clinic's own information. It also gave the red-flag safety line, word for word as the clinic wrote it in the instructions. It didn't suggest heat or stretches. It didn't send a text confirmation, because Klugon doesn't send texts. The reference was given in the call.

Sample WhatsApp: a counselling enquiry at night

A sample WhatsApp conversation. The practice, Fernleigh Counselling in Sheffield, is made up.

The AI didn't ask why Jo wants counselling. The practice wrote that rule into its instructions. The safety line at the end is the practice's choice. Some counsellors include it on every first contact, and some only when the message suggests distress. Decide which you want, and test it.

Sample website chat: a sports massage booking

A sample website chat. The business, Keel Street Sports Massage in Cardiff, is made up.

Here the "flag" is the handover. Owen sees the conversation marked "Needs a person" in the inbox, and on Slack if he's connected it. He replies by phone, because website chats can't be replied to from the inbox.

Setting up a physiotherapy AI receptionist

Setup is mostly writing down what you already know. Allow an afternoon to write and test it properly. Budget longer if you're connecting WhatsApp, because that needs a Meta business setup first.

A setup checklist for therapy practices

1. Sign up and start the trial. The trial is 7 days, a card is required, and you're charged when it ends unless you cancel. During the trial, you test the voice assistant in your browser. A phone number can be added once the trial ends.
2. Add your services with real durations. Separate the initial assessment from follow-ups. Add counselling sessions, introductory calls and massage lengths as their own services.
3. Add your clinicians as staff, and assign each service to the people who deliver it. A counsellor shouldn't be offered for physio slots.
4. Set opening hours, buffer and notice. If you need 10 minutes between patients for notes, set a buffer. If you don't want same-day bookings made at 8.55 for 9.00, set minimum notice. Set closed dates for bank holidays and your own leave.
5. Write the fees and policies document. Include prices, session lengths, your cancellation policy, insurers you're recognised by, whether patients need authorisation codes, accessibility, parking and what to wear. Upload it or paste it in. Scanned PDFs aren't read, so use the text version.
6. Write the safety instructions. Use your own words for: no clinical advice, the red-flag line, the crisis line (999, Samaritans 116 123, or 988 in the US), and flagging. Keep it short and unambiguous.
7. Write your greeting. The default greeting doesn't say it's an AI. Write your own greeting that does, as in the sample call above. Patients in a health setting deserve to know.
8. Test with the hard questions. Ask it about ice and heat, ask it about sciatica, tell it you feel unsafe, ask it if a named person is a patient. Fix the instructions until every answer is right.
9. Connect your channels. Add the chat widget to your website with one script tag. Connect WhatsApp through Meta if you use it. After the trial, buy a number or forward your existing practice number to Klugon.
10. Connect Slack or Zapier (voice or social Business tier and above), so new bookings, leads and handovers reach you somewhere you'll actually see them. On Starter, check the inbox and the insights page every morning instead.

Keeping your existing number

Most practices have had the same number on their website, their Google listing and their insurers' directories for years. You don't need to change it. Klugon gives you a dedicated number, and you set your existing line to forward to it through your phone provider's call forwarding. Some practices forward only when they're busy or don't answer, so a receptionist still picks up when they're at the desk and the AI takes the overflow. Number porting isn't supported. Forwarding or a SIP trunk is how you keep your number.

Working alongside your practice software

This is where you need to be honest with yourself about your diary. Many physio and osteopathy clinics already run on dedicated practice management software, such as Cliniko, Jane, WriteUpp, TM3 or Pabau. Those systems hold clinical notes, invoicing, insurer billing and the main diary. Klugon doesn't connect to any of them.

There are three workable patterns:

• Use Klugon's built-in diary for new-patient slots. Block out a set of first-assessment slots in Klugon and keep the same times closed in your main system. The AI books new patients into those, and you copy them across. It's manual, but it's simple and nothing double-books.
• Use a connected calendar. On the voice or social Business tier and above, Klugon can read busy times from Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, and can send Calendly links, after setup. If your practice system syncs out to Google Calendar, that can help the AI avoid clashes. Test it carefully. The main booking tool writes to Klugon's own diary, and an external calendar push isn't automatic two-way sync.
• Use it for questions and leads only. Some clinics don't want the AI booking at all. They want it to answer the fee, insurance and parking questions and take a name and number for a callback. That works too, and it's the most cautious way to start.

Languages

If you treat patients who prefer another language, the phone assistant can speak English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese or Arabic, depending on the setting you choose. Your safety lines should be checked in each language you switch on.

What it costs

Klugon prices in US dollars. There are three separate products, and you pay only for the ones you use:

Paying yearly takes 20% off. A phone number is $9 a month, and a connected WhatsApp number is $19 a month. The full detail is on the pricing page.

A worked example for a two-room physio clinic

Assumptions, which you should swap for your own:

• The clinic misses 6 calls a week from new patients, because both physios are treating and there's no receptionist at the desk.
• One in three of those callers would have booked if someone had answered.
• An initial assessment is £72, and the average new patient has four sessions in total at about £50 each after the first.

That's 2 lost new patients a week. Each one is worth about £222 over their course (£72 plus three follow-ups at £50). Over a month of four weeks, that's 8 patients and roughly £1,776 of treatment that went elsewhere.

The voice Starter plan with a forwarded number costs $108 a month. If it recovers even one of those patients a month, it has more than paid for itself. Whether it recovers more depends on your callers, and you'll see it in your bookings within a few weeks.

Against a human receptionist

A part-time receptionist working 20 hours a week at the UK National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour (the rate for workers aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026) costs about £1,100 a month in wages before employer's National Insurance, pension contributions and holiday cover. That receptionist also does things the AI can't:

• take card payments at the desk
• chase unpaid invoices
• call patients back
• recognise a regular's voice
• reassure someone in person

For many practices the honest answer is both: a receptionist in clinic hours and the AI for the overflow, evenings and weekends. The AI vs human receptionist comparison goes through that trade-off in more depth.

Against a telephone answering service

A traditional answering service takes a message and emails or texts it to you. It doesn't usually book into your diary or answer questions about your fees in detail. An AI receptionist answers the question and books the slot. The answering service has one real advantage: a trained person on the line, who can use judgement with a distressed caller. Weigh that if a large share of your calls are counselling enquiries.

Regulation, confidentiality and health data

Therapy practices sit across several regulators, and which one applies depends on your profession. The rules on confidentiality, communication and records apply to how you run your front desk as well as your treatment room.

HCPC for physiotherapists

In the UK, physiotherapists are regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council. "Physiotherapist" and "physical therapist" are protected titles. The HCPC's standards of conduct, performance and ethics, effective from 1 September 2024, are grouped under ten headings. Several of them bear directly on an AI receptionist:

• Communicate appropriately and effectively. An AI that tells patients clearly what it is, and what it can't help with, supports this. An AI that drifts into advice works against it.
• Work within the limits of your knowledge and skills. The AI has no clinical knowledge to work within, so the limit is simple: none.
• Respect confidentiality. Don't let the assistant confirm to a third party that someone is your patient. Don't put clinical notes into its knowledge base.
• Keep records of your work. Klugon stores conversations in your inbox, but it isn't a clinical record. Anything clinically relevant a patient tells the AI should be moved into your proper notes by you.

The same register covers other therapy professions you may share a building with, such as occupational therapists, podiatrists and practitioner psychologists.

Osteopaths, counsellors and massage therapists

Osteopaths are regulated by the General Osteopathic Council, under the Osteopaths Act 1993, and "osteopath" is a protected title. Its standards on communication and consent apply to your first contact with a patient just as they do to physios.

Counselling and psychotherapy aren't regulated by law in the UK. Most counsellors belong to a professional body whose register is accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, such as the BACP. That accreditation is not statutory regulation, but your professional body's ethical framework still governs confidentiality and contact with clients. Massage therapists are in a similar position, with voluntary registers.

Health data under UK GDPR

The ICO's guidance on special category data is clear that data concerning health includes more than clinical notes. Appointment records can reveal something about a person's health. So can the simple fact that someone has booked with a counsellor.

That means:

• Keep what the AI collects minimal. Name, contact number and the service booked are enough. Instruct the assistant not to ask about symptoms or reasons for counselling.
• Callers will volunteer health information anyway. It ends up in the conversation log. Treat your Klugon inbox as health data and restrict who has dashboard access.
• Tell patients about it. Your privacy notice should say you use an AI assistant to handle enquiries and bookings, and name the provider.

Klugon is operated by a German company under the GDPR. Transfers to its sub-processors, such as the AI and telephony providers, are covered by standard contractual clauses, as listed in its privacy policy. Klugon isn't certified for HIPAA, so US practices handling protected health information should take their own advice before using it for anything beyond general enquiries. You can export conversations, leads and customers as CSV and delete individual records yourself. Full erasure is by request to Klugon.

How it compares with practice management software

Most therapy practices already pay for practice software, and some of it has online booking built in. It's fair to ask what an AI adds.

They do different jobs. Your practice software is the system of record. It holds notes and invoices, and often sends the reminders. The AI's job is the front door: the phone call during a treatment, the 11pm WhatsApp message, the "how much is it?" question that otherwise costs you a callback. Klugon doesn't send appointment reminders, so if your software does that well, keep it.

If you're curious how reminders and no-shows interact with this, the guide on how to reduce no-shows at a clinic covers what works, including the parts Klugon doesn't do.

Measuring whether it's working

Give it a month, then check four things:

• New-patient bookings made by the AI, especially outside clinic hours. The analytics page shows bookings and the channel they came from.
• Handovers. The analytics page shows how many conversations were handed to a person. A high share early on usually means the knowledge base is missing something, not that the AI is failing.
• Questions without a good answer. The insights page lists questions the assistant couldn't answer well. Add those answers to your fees and policies document.
• Your own missed-call log. If your phone provider shows missed calls, compare the month before with the month after.

Read a sample of conversations every week for the first month, especially any that mention pain, medication or distress, and check the AI stayed inside its limits. Every call appears in your inbox. Klugon doesn't record call audio, and on calls the saved transcript may show only the AI's side, so the conversation log isn't a verbatim record of what the caller said.

Frequently asked questions

Will the assistant give my patients exercise or treatment advice?

No, if you set it up properly. You instruct it not to give clinical advice of any kind, to offer an appointment instead, and to flag the question for a clinician. Test this before going live by asking it typical clinical questions yourself.

What happens if a counselling client discloses that they are suicidal?

The assistant tells them to call 999 if they're in immediate danger and gives them Samaritans on 116 123 (or 988 in the US). It then flags the conversation for your team. It can't transfer the call to you or counsel the person, and the flag shows in your inbox (and on Slack or Zapier, on the Business tier and above), not as a phone call to you.

Can it book into Cliniko, Jane, WriteUpp or TM3?

No. Klugon doesn't integrate with practice management software. It books into its own built-in diary, and after setup it can check Google, Outlook or Apple calendars. Many clinics keep a set of new-patient slots in Klugon and copy bookings across.

Does it send appointment reminders or confirmations by text?

No. Klugon doesn't send SMS, email confirmations or reminders. The patient gets a booking reference in the conversation itself. If your practice software sends reminders, keep using it for that.

Can it take a deposit or a cancellation fee?

No. Klugon doesn't take deposits, no-show fees or card payments on calls. Your cancellation policy can be explained by the AI, and any charge is handled by you through your usual system.

Does it tell callers that it's an AI?

Only if you tell it to. The default greeting doesn't mention it. For a health practice, write your own greeting that says it's the clinic's AI assistant, as in the samples above.

Can a patient move their appointment by phone?

On calls, the assistant can cancel a booking and make a new one, but there's no single "move" step. On WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and website chat, it can reschedule a booking directly.

Is Klugon HCPC-approved or HIPAA-compliant?

No. The HCPC regulates practitioners, not software, so there's no such approval to have. Klugon isn't certified for HIPAA, SOC 2 or ISO 27001. It's operated by a German company under the GDPR, with transfers covered by standard contractual clauses.

Can I use it only for new-patient enquiries and not bookings?

Yes. You can leave booking switched off in its instructions and have it answer questions and capture leads with a name, number and short note. You call them back. This is a cautious way to start.

Can I keep my practice phone number?

Yes. You forward your existing number to the Klugon number with your phone provider's call forwarding, either for all calls or only when you're busy. A Klugon number costs $9 a month and can be added after the 7-day trial.

Next steps

The clinics hub covers what's common to every kind of practice. If you share premises with other clinicians, the pages for medical practices, dentists and opticians deal with their own call types. To see how the assistant behaves before you change anything about your phones, start with Klugon's AI receptionist in the browser during the trial, and ask it the hardest questions your patients ask you.