In this presentation Jeff Langmaid explains that "speed to lead"—the time between a patient inquiry and the practice’s first response—has a decisive impact on conversion rates for chiropractic clinics. He cites data showing that a delay of more than five minutes can cut the chance of booking an appointment by over 50%, and that 60% of patients abandon the process after a single unanswered call. Because front‑desk staff cannot be available 24/7, Langmaid argues that technology, specifically modern AI‑driven call agents, is essential. He differentiates simple bots (binary, script‑based) from AI that can access a practice’s knowledge base, respond dynamically, and improve over time. He describes how AI can reduce repetitive tasks, increase consistency, free staff for genuine human interaction, and meet the growing patient expectation (70% per Gartner) for digital self‑service. While acknowledging that AI isn’t perfect, he emphasizes a "speed beats perfection" mindset: achieving 80‑90% effective response is far better than slower, flawless handling. The talk concludes with a call to adopt AI tools to enhance, not replace, the human element of chiropractic care.
Chapters
So speed to lead simply means that the amount of time that's elapsed between when a lead comes in and when a lead is followed up with is completely determinant on whether that person gets on your schedule or not. And there's something, I don't know the exact stat off the top of my head, but something like if 5 minutes goes by between when an inquiry comes in and a phone call goes out or a message goes out, if more than 5 minutes goes by, it's more than a 50% decrease in the opportunity that that person will schedule. In a practice. So this is the importance of why timeliness is so important, is because we've seen in statistics time and time again that when there's a delay in communication, it ultimately breaks down the ability to help that individual. And that's what this is all about, again. So your team cannot be available 24/7, 365 in most cases. So utilizing technology is critical because, you know, this is not about putting more work on your team. This is not about replacing your team. It's about enhancing their ability, I'll say again, to be knee-to-knee, heart-to-heart with these individuals. I love a prac— I'll give you an example. In a busy practice, which is great, often the phones can be going quite a bit. There's probably people in here that get hundreds of phone calls per week into their front desk of their practice. And if your front desk is trying to answer each one of those calls while trying to check in and check out the people coming in, to me, that's a missed opportunity at human connection. And that's what we should be about as chiropractors, is taking the opportunity when somebody walks through the threshold of our practice to have a human connection with that individual. So AI can help us in tremendous ways. And I'll say also in evolving ways. These slides, I'll admit, I submitted these slides a few months ago. There's plenty in these slides that has changed dramatically just over the last few months. This is, I'm gonna say, the bleeding edge, the cutting edge of what we're gonna discuss today. So things are rapidly changing. Who here has ever heard a call agent or tested one in the past? Great. How long ago was it? Months, years? Months, days, years. Okay, so 2 years ago, they were pretty whack. Like, they did not sound good. There was tremendous amount of latency. It did not sound human. It sounded like a robot. Robot, right? And, and also, I want to be clear, all of us have had the experience calling a business. Many times it's like an airline or a credit card company where you hit like a phone tree or a bot and you're like, this is the worst customer experience possible. So number one, I appreciate you all coming today to learn about why this is different and how this is different. But this is the difference between a bot and AI. A bot basically is a yes/no. It's binary. If this, then that. So it's limited in its ability. And a call tree, of course, everybody knows what a call tree is, does its own thing. When AI is working its best, it is accessing the knowledge of your practice, your website, whatever you feed into it, and then dynamically being able to interact with the person on the phone in this case and answer the questions appropriately. So it should be a far better experience, not a worse experience. And I can tell you, even up to maybe 6 months, 1 year ago, the experience even with the AI components, they were a little rough around the edges. But what I've seen is literally week by week latency improve, the dynamic tone of what they can do improving, and it's really, really cool. So I hope that you get that takeaway as we walk through what this looks like in real life. So patients do now expect instant access. We talked about speed to lead and why that's so important. And it really is about, again, being on their timelines. Nights, weekends, lunch hours. I'm going to say speed beats perfection. Nothing's perfect. And even on the example that we go through today, you might say, ooh, that's just not exactly 100%. It might not be 100%, but man, if we can get 80%, 90%, and ultimately increase our ability to connect with people, I think we're doing the right thing. So a couple docs here highlighted 20% of calls after hours. You know, I've talked with some other individuals that run EHR companies, things like that. They monitor some of this, and we've seen up to 75%— depends on your hours, it depends upon where you live— but the bottom line is there's a lot of calls that come in when you're not able to answer the phone. And every one of those is a potential missed opportunity to be able to help somebody. 60% of patients give up after one unanswered call. That is a pretty rousing statistic in my mind. So it emphasizes the importance of ensuring that you do have your calls answered. So again, AI does not replace— as my business partner in the back, Jason Dyches, said, this is, this is about being a human doctor. This is about being human, but allowing technology to do its work as well. It's not about replacing anybody. It's about enhancing your team's ability to connect with individuals. So removing repetition. Preserving human energy so that they can be more present with the people walking through your front door, improving consistency. This has probably never happened to anybody in this room, but have you ever coached or trained a new hire in your practice and then gone back a few months later and saw the difference between how you coached and trained and what was happening? It just happens. That's like normal. It's totally normal. That's why coaching and training is so important in your practice., but the, that's totally normal. The beautiful part about AI is you can teach it and do guardrails, and ultimately every time it learns and gets better, it doesn't fall away from the train tracks. The train tracks get tighter, and that's so, so powerful. And I think it should not be overlooked that ultimately this enables you to be more efficient, to be better consistency, and ultimately again, free your team for real connection. So there's a stat from Gartner that 70% of patients expect a digital self-service option. Thank you so much for watching this video on the Evidence Based Chiropractor channel. If you don't want to miss a single thing, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can get notifications of every video we put out. And we put out new content each and every week, so be sure to subscribe today.
