Multilingual Phone Assistant for Dental Tourism in Turkey

A multilingual phone assistant for dental clinics and health tourism is the voice an international patient hears when they call a clinic in Turkey: it answers on an English line, takes their enquiry in English, collects their travel dates and how they want to be contacted, and passes everything to a patient coordinator. It does not assess symptoms, propose treatment or quote prices; those stay with the dentist and the coordinator. Because health data is a special category of personal data in Turkey, it keeps what it collects to a minimum, and any promotional calling has to respect Turkey’s specific rules on promoting health services.

We covered the general picture of phone assistants for clinics in our guide for clinics. This guide looks at the phone line through an international patient’s eyes: what they need from the first call, seven call flows, what they should not expect, setup, the Turkish rules that shape the call, metrics and a fictional call from the UK.

What international patients need from the first call

A patient calling from abroad is usually earlier in their decision than a local patient. Their questions sound like this:

• Which treatments does the clinic offer, and how does the process work?
• How much will it cost, and how is the treatment plan made?
• How long do I need to stay in Turkey, and how many trips will it take?
• Is there an airport transfer, help with accommodation, an interpreter?
• How do I send my X-rays and photos?
• What happens if I have a problem after I get home?

Local patients, by contrast, mostly book check-ups, move appointments, call about toothache or ask for directions. Both groups lose out when calls are missed, but for different reasons:

• Time zones. Some calls from abroad arrive while the clinic is closed.
• Language. Nobody on shift may speak the caller’s language at that moment.
• A single coordinator. The coordinator accompanying a patient in the clinic cannot answer the phone.
• Scattered channels. The same patient calls, then writes on WhatsApp, then sends an email, and the context is lost.
• Enquiries go cold. A patient calling from abroad may be comparing several clinics; a slow reply to the first contact can lose the enquiry.

To see what missed calls cost with your own numbers, try the missed call cost calculator.

Seven call flows, seen from the patient’s side

1. The first enquiry from abroad

• Trigger: An international patient wants information about treatment.
• Details: Language, country and time zone, the treatment area they are interested in (in general terms), travel window, preferred contact channel.
• Outcome: The coordinator receives a single record with a call summary and starts the treatment planning process.
• Handover: The coordinator follows up every enquiry; if they are free, the call is transferred straight away.

2. Travel and logistics questions

• Trigger: Transfers, accommodation, length of stay, interpreters.
• Details: None needed; answers come from general information the clinic has approved.
• Outcome: The question is answered; personal planning is left to the coordinator or a partner facilitator.
• Handover: Anything that needs firm dates or bookings.

3. Calling in a language other than English

• Trigger: The caller speaks neither Turkish nor English.
• Details: The language.
• Outcome: The call goes to the queue of a coordinator who speaks it (skill-based routing).
• Handover: If nobody suitable is available, a voicemail is taken and a callback is planned for the patient’s time zone.

4. Calling outside Turkish office hours

• Trigger: A call while the clinic is closed.
• Details: Name, language, contact channel, request.
• Outcome: The assistant logs the request, and the callback is planned for the patient’s local time.
• Handover: The coordinator works through the list when the clinic opens.

5. Pain or an emergency during the stay

• Trigger: “My tooth really hurts”, “my face is swollen”, “the bleeding won’t stop”.
• Details: Name and number; the assistant does not assess the situation.
• Outcome: The call goes to a priority queue or the on-call team. If the situation sounds life-threatening, the caller is told to dial 112, Turkey’s emergency number, without delay.
• Handover: Always.

6. Aftercare once the patient is home

• Trigger: A scheduled check-in call for a patient who has returned home.
• Details: A suitable time for a check-up, and whether the patient reports a problem.
• Outcome: A check-up appointment or a coordinator call is scheduled.
• Handover: If the patient describes a problem, to the coordinator and the dentist. The call must not include promotion.

7. Local patients’ bookings

• Trigger: A check-up, consultation or treatment session.
• Details: Name, contact number, service and preferred time; the details of the complaint are not asked for.
• Outcome: If the calendar is connected, the appointment is booked; if not, the request goes to reception.
• Handover: Requests to speak to the dentist and medical questions.

Ready-made reminder scripts for local patients are in our appointment reminder call scripts, and greeting and after-hours wording in our announcement templates.

What patients should not expect from the assistant

• No diagnosis or treatment advice. “Implant or bridge?” is a question for the dentist.
• No price quotes. The treatment plan comes after an assessment by the dentist, and the price depends on that plan.
• No promised results or comparisons. Phrases such as “guaranteed results” or “the best clinic” have no place in the assistant’s script.
• No medical documents by phone. X-rays, photos and medical history are not collected by voice; the patient is given a secure way to share them.
• No payment, visa or legal advice. These belong with the coordinator and the relevant specialist.

Setup in five steps

1. Plan the number and the language entry point. The assistant speaks one language for the whole call, so set up a separate number for international patients or a keypad language choice in the greeting menu, and route each language to its own agent; options for connecting your existing number are in our guide to connecting your business number.
2. Write the knowledge base in both languages. Treatment areas, the steps of the process, general information on transfers and accommodation, opening hours. Keep it consistent with what your website says.
3. Connect the calendar and coordination system. Send enquiries, summaries and outcome codes to your patient coordination system or CRM through the API and webhooks.
4. Prepare announcements in both languages. The privacy notice and the sentence telling callers they are speaking to an AI assistant should exist in Turkish and English; examples are in our KVKK guide.
5. Test. English in different accents, the time-zone scenario, emergency phrases and the price question; extend our test checklist with English scenarios.

The Turkish rules that shape the call

This section is general information, not legal advice. The rules in this area were renewed in recent years; last checked: 2026-10-22.

Health data. Article 6 of Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (in Turkish) treats data about health as a special category and in principle prohibits processing it; there must be explicit consent or one of the cases the article lists, such as processing by persons under a duty of confidentiality where it is needed for medical diagnosis and treatment. That is why the phone assistant should not collect health details at the enquiry stage. Article 9 sets separate conditions for transfers abroad; if you share data with a facilitator based abroad or use services that process data outside Turkey, review this with your lawyer. Clinics treating patients from the EU should also ask their lawyer whether other data protection rules apply alongside KVKK.

Health tourism. Turkey’s Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health (in Turkish, Official Gazette, 26 April 2025) provides that:

• Health facilities and facilitators need an authorisation certificate to work in international health tourism (Article 5).
• A facilitator must have the infrastructure to answer incoming calls in at least two foreign languages around the clock, seven days a week, or contract a call centre that can provide it (Article 6).
• A health facility sets up an international health tourism unit responsible for tasks including interpreting, and at least one person in the unit must speak a foreign language, with documentation (Article 7).
• Personal health data is processed in line with Law No. 6698 (Article 8); the fee for services is set by the Ministry and facilities follow its price tariff (Article 11).

The regulation says nothing about whether an AI assistant can take the place of these obligations. Position the assistant alongside the unit and the coordinator, not instead of them, and confirm what is acceptable with your lawyer and the competent authority.

Promotion. Article 13 of the same regulation applies Turkey’s Regulation on Promotion and Information Activities in Health Services (in Turkish). Article 5 of that regulation bans covert and overt advertising of health services, rules out promotion that creates a perception that a service is superior to others, and states that people’s personal phones may not be called without their knowledge and consent. In practice, promotional outbound calls by clinics are subject to these rules on top of İYS consent, and the assistant’s script must not make superiority claims. Keep reminder and aftercare calls purely informational; see our guide to İYS consent rules for details.

Which metrics should you track?

Sample call (fictional)

Fictional example: not a real call; the clinic and names are made up.
The caller dialled the clinic’s English line; the whole call is in English.

Assistant: Hello, this is Mavi Dental Clinic. I’m the clinic’s AI assistant.
Caller:    Hi, I’m calling from Manchester. I’m interested in dental implants in Istanbul.
Assistant: Thank you for calling. I can take a few details and our patient coordinator will get back to you.
           Which dates are you thinking of travelling?
Caller:    Sometime in March. How much would it cost?
Assistant: Prices depend on the treatment plan our dentist prepares after an assessment, so I can’t
           quote a price on the phone. The coordinator will explain the next steps. How would you
           prefer to be contacted, by phone or WhatsApp?
Caller:    WhatsApp, please. Can I send my X-rays?
Assistant: Please don’t share them on this call. The coordinator will send you a secure way to share them.
           To confirm: implant enquiry, travel in March, contact by WhatsApp, UK time.

Multilingual clinic calls with Speakline

We build Speakline in Turkey, and our voice agent works Turkish-first, with English support. For healthcare providers, you set up separate Turkish and English agents; callers dial the international number or choose their language in the call flow menu, and the assistant stays in that language for the whole call. The agents are configured not to give medical advice or quote prices. For other languages, calls are routed by language skill in our call center; the coordinator picks up the call from the browser-based operator desk with a call summary (warm transfer), and if nobody is free, voicemail and a queue callback take over.

International patients’ WhatsApp, SMS and Telegram messages land in the same inbox as phone calls. Enquiries, summaries and transcripts can be sent to your CRM through the API and webhooks. You plan reminder and aftercare calls as outbound campaigns, and in promotional campaigns numbers are checked against İYS records. Calls can be recorded and transcribed; if a call flow has no KVKK notice before recording, the designer warns you, and team accounts can be protected with two-step sign-in. To adapt it to your clinic, get in touch.