One thing we knew from the very start at Sisu Clinic was that patient delight and experience in our clinic’s were our number one priority.
Obviously, with my partners Dr. James Cotter and Dr. Brian Cotter, I understood the medical side of the business was a given. We had established a rule early on that everyone was a patient; Sisu has no clients or customers only patients, a rule we carry on to this day.
In the early days of Sisu, I visited over one hundred clinic’s, med spas and spas worldwide to understand their flow. Probably the one thing that annoyed me the most was the lack of “Zen”. These were noisy, busy spots where “customers” were left waiting while the front of house took a call, and I almost felt like I was an annoyance or interrupting their day. I always felt tense going into the treatment room in these places, not a good thing when you are having an injectable treatment like botox .
I swore early on that there would be no phones or interruptions in Sisu, and the only thing we wanted our “patient concierge’s” to do was greet the patients by first name and ensure they had an amazing experience with us. This works to this day and is evidenced by our over 10K+ five-star Google reviews, where not only are our doctors name-checked, but our concierges are too. A huge part of this is down to our Head of Operations Geraldine Mangan for Ireland/UK, Katimar Castro for the USA, and our amazing teams.
However, one of the most difficult things to solve is phone calls. As we scaled, we started out with an in-house team led by Aine and Laura. When this got too much, we outsourced to Voxpro first and then Otonomee. However, the issue really becomes apparent as the scale happens and you go global. With clinics in Ireland, UK and USA ,you need multiple teams but also multiple languages and multiple locations plus 24/7/365 availability. Obviously, in software where margins are huge, this is easy, but for a medical business, these costs become unbearable.
About 2 years ago I started working with Brian Kenny and the team at Minicorp around online patient experience, given our ambition to become the Starbucks of the space. We rebuilt websites, rebuilt booking engines and patient service channels to ensure our patients had amazing experiences but it was always the phones. We just couldn’t afford multi-language (English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese are our requirements) plus 24/7/365 availability.
Enter Chat GPT/A.I. and neural training.
As A.I. became more mainstream, we began to explore a solution, and after almost 12 months of model training on languages/responses, yesterday we launched Laila.
So who’s Laila?
Laila is our virtual concierge, she speaks 5000 languages, she never sleeps, she is integrated into all our booking services and patient services. She is available on our website as chat, she is available inside WhatsApp, you can save her number +1-289-816-2247 as your Sisu assistant. She is available for you, our patients, 24/7/365 and in your language.
She can book your next appointment, she can change your next appointment, and she can even let us know if you are running a few minutes late
Laila is only a baby, but she’s growing up fast. Pretty soon you will be able to speak with her like you do every day with your friends
We love her and hope you do too.
Welcome aboard Laila
- Pat Phelan
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