AI Answering Service for Optometry Practices in Canada

The optometry front desk wears too many hats

A typical practice books exams, sells frames, dispenses contacts, processes insurance, fits trial lenses, and handles emergency drop-ins, all from one front desk that's constantly interrupted between dispensary customers and the phone. So 25 to 40 percent of calls go unanswered during business hours, and the two biggest misses are new-patient calls and contact-lens reorders. Lost reorders alone can be thousands of dollars a year.

A 1n1.ai phone number sits on top of your existing line and catches every call. It books routine exams, takes contact-lens reorders, captures frame inquiries, and emails your practice within a minute.

What the agent handles

• Eye-exam bookings: comprehensive, follow-up, child, senior, diabetic, contact-lens fitting
• Contact-lens reorders: brand and prescription (or "look up my file"), shipping vs pickup, urgency
• Frame and lens inquiries: in-stock brands, progressive/polarized/transitions/blue-light options
• Insurance verification, pediatric and senior exam questions, LASIK/surgery referral inquiries
• Vision emergencies (URGENT): foreign body, sudden vision change, eye injury, chemical splash

Vision-emergency keywords ("sudden vision loss," "flashing lights," "chemical splash") get an URGENT prefix so your team routes to in-clinic or ER appropriately.

How Sophia answers for an optometry practice

Optometry practices use our general receptionist. Sophia does not have a script written for optometry practices yet, but she knows your hours, services, prices, service area and policies from the answers you give in the setup, and she asks for the fields you choose from every caller: name and phone always, plus the reason for the visit, whether they are a new patient, and insurance if you ask for it. She never gives clinical advice and never confirms a slot she cannot see. When a caller asks something you did not cover, she says the team will confirm and writes the question down, so you read it in the summary a minute after the call.

Multi-language for patients

Vision-care clients do better discussing exams, prescriptions, and frame selection in their first language. The agent speaks 70+ languages with native accents. A Cantonese-speaking senior calling about a cataract follow-up gets fluent Cantonese intake; your recap arrives in English with the booking request and follow-up context.

How it fits the front desk

1. The patient dials your practice number.
2. Optionally, your front desk phone rings first for a few seconds (human-first mode).
3. If nobody grabs it, the AI answers in your practice's name.
4. It identifies the call type and captures the request (patient name, file lookup, urgency).
5. A recap lands in the practice inbox within a minute, URGENT for vision emergencies.
6. Your front desk follows up between in-person patients, and the exam or reorder is booked.

The monthly math

Single-OD practices typically run on Starter at $79 CAD a month: 250 minutes of calls, with the local phone number and the website included. Multi-OD practices with dispensary and contact-lens fulfillment move to Pro or Business for more minutes; plans differ by minutes only, and there is no per-minute overage.

Set that against additional front desk staff ($40,000 to $55,000 a year) or a healthcare answering service with no optometry intake, and the recovered contact-lens reorders alone tend to cover it.

Try it before you decide

Sign up, pick the closest business type, and answer a few questions about your practice: hours, services, where you work, what to say about prices. Sophia is ready the moment you save, on a local Canadian number that is free for as long as you stay, with a simple website to match. Call your own number and listen to her answer; if she says something you would not, change the answer that produced it. Free for 7 days, no card. Set up my AI receptionist.

Serving a specific market? See the local guides for Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montreal.