What AI Learned from 738,000 Patient Conversations w/ Dennis Steele

What does 738,000 patient conversations tell us about how businesses are adapting to AI?

Dr. Randi Boyette: More than 700,000 patient conversations, and more than 75,000 appointments booked. When you look at that real-world usage, what does it tell you about how we're responding to AI?

Dennis Steele: I think everyone is adapting. There are definitely stigmas out there about AI and the technology in general, but I really do think we're going to look back in the next ten or twenty years and see this as a transition point, very similar to the internet or mobile. Everybody needed to adapt to those technology shifts, and this is just another one.

Dr. Randi: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Dr. Randi Show, where we explore the ideas, innovations, and technologies shaping the future of aesthetics, beauty, wellness, and medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Randi Boyette.

Who is Dennis Steele, and what has Podium's AI accomplished?

Dr. Randi: Our guest today co-founded Podium, one of the most influential technology companies in aesthetics. His AI has powered more than 700,000 patient conversations and helped book more than 75,000 appointments, and his work has earned industry-defining recognition from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Please welcome Dennis Steele to the show.

Dennis: Hi, thanks for having me. It's such an exciting time right now with AI in the aesthetics and med spa industry in general, and I'm happy to chat today.

Dr. Randi: I can tell you that as I was researching for this show, I couldn't wait to dive in even deeper, because what you're doing with AI is fascinating, and you've probably seen a few episodes of the show — I'm all about my robots and using AI for everything possible. Dennis, you co-founded Podium in 2014, and today your company works with more than 1,800 aesthetic clinics across the country. You've had visibility into hundreds of thousands of patient conversations across the whole aesthetics industry.

What do those conversations reveal about today's aesthetic patient?

Dr. Randi: What do those conversations really tell you about today's aesthetic patient?

Dennis: It's incredible to have insight from patient conversations and see how the market is changing. So much is going into that, because we see technology changing the way all of us as consumers act and interact with the businesses we enjoy, and those expectations change a lot over time. We've seen a lot of change, both on the business side and on the consumer side — everything from how you determine what business you go to for your services, to how you build a relationship with a local service provider. One of the biggest things to note is the sophistication today's consumer has compared to when I started the business. The way a patient searched before was just, what is this type of service provider and how close are they to me? Now there's so much more research everyone is doing, either through Google or through AI, before they even decide where to go. We entered aesthetics at the same time, so we've watched all of those changes together.

Dr. Randi: What I did read is that Podium has been at the center of the AI conversation in aesthetics for so many years. What really struck me as I was researching is that patients aren't just interacting with AI at clinics anymore — they're using it every day to shop, make decisions, gather information about their health and their appearance. How is that changing the way patients approach aesthetic treatments?

Dennis: The biggest thing is people are coming to the table way more informed. A few years ago you might have heard from a friend, so you had surface-level information. Now, with AI research, you can go as deep as you want and come to the table knowing quite a lot about each procedure. What we've found, especially in aesthetics and with med spas, is that being adaptable and meeting the customer where they are in that journey — whether they've done zero research or really deep research — and responding to them the right way is key.

How is instant gratification reshaping patient expectations?

Dennis: I think the key characteristic is the instant-gratification expectations we have to meet with a lot of these Gen Z consumers — being able to adapt and give them answers quickly. Sometimes the answer is, what is this procedure about, and they want to be taken through that journey of education. And sometimes the answer is getting on the calendar as fast as possible — they don't want to deal with any friction. So from a practice perspective, you have to be in a position to accommodate anyone across that spectrum, and that takes a lot of intricacy. That's where we're finding AI is actually really helpful in helping practice owners navigate their patients' expectations.

Dr. Randi: One of the biggest concerns I still hear is, "my patients don't want to talk to AI." From everything you've seen, is that really the issue, or do patients simply want fast and accurate answers?

Do patients actually not want to talk to AI?

Dennis: I would say there is a stigma of "my patients don't want to talk to AI," and that's when we're thinking about bad AI — bad responses, because nobody wants that. I don't want to feel like I'm being talked to by a robot, and those aren't the expectations the patient has. However, what we've been able to do at Podium, and with the way we've built AI into the practice management software, is give the AI all the context it needs so the response is extremely natural and customized to how the practice wants to talk to its patients. We take a lot of time and care making sure these AI responses are crafted to sound as close to you or one of your staff members as possible. It sounds too good to be true, but we've been doing this for three years, close to a million conversations — actually millions of messages in total — and we've been able to refine it over and over to get far from that bot-feeling conversation and really close to speaking with a professional staff member who talks to the patient exactly how you'd want them to.

Dr. Randi: You brought up instant gratification, and I agree — we live in a world where instant gratification always wins. I'm guilty of it too: whoever can get me something the fastest wins. So how much does responsiveness really influence whether a patient ultimately chooses a provider, and what happens if they don't get a response right away?

Why has response speed become the top driver of patient conversion?

Dennis: What we find in the data is that it's the number one thing — the absolute number one thing. And it's getting more and more that way as the patient changes too. When you look at patient demographics, we've seen Gen Z patients triple across a lot of our practices over the last five or six years, and new patient expectations come with that demographic, including this instant response of giving me the answer I need. If not, as a capable mobile power user, I'm going to go find a different service that can meet that expectation. And those expectations aren't just set by your competitor — they're set by everything we use. The first time you use Uber, that sets a new expectation for how you want to interact with a service. These expectations are constantly being set, and the bar keeps rising. So as a practice owner, the job is to adapt to those patient expectations and meet them, and it's very hard to do that without leveraging AI, because you need to be on 24/7 and in a position to answer the question. If you're not leveraging AI, you can almost be confident you're not in a position to fully meet the expectations your patients are demanding of you.

Dr. Randi: There's really a difference in what good AI actually looks like. We've talked about how AI is changing the patient experience — let's go beyond just a chat box. Most people have had an interaction with AI that left them frustrated; they have a story to tell. What's changed over the last few years that made AI feel dramatically different?

How does Podium customize Avery for each practice?

Dennis: One of the biggest things is the technology getting a lot better. This is a technology that's here to stay, and those who were early in adopting — and for us, early in developing with AI — have been able to find ways to make it work correctly with their practice. One of the biggest things is the ability to review the process of building out a message. It gets pretty complex, but for one single text-message response to a patient in the Podium workflow, we can reference up to 30 or 40 different sources of business information to craft just one response. Those sources can be everything from exactly how and when you want to book an appointment to exactly how you answer a question about a specific service.

I'll go one layer deeper to show how we pull this off. We have something within Podium called AI Studio, and within AI Studio you train the AI employees just as you would a human employee. If you have something very specific about your practice — say, we never book Thursday mornings for this procedure — we can implement dozens or hundreds of these instructions for your AI employee, and it will adhere to it every time. That's instructions for how the business operates, but it's also the personality of your business, which separates a lot of what our practice owners say — "we're different because we provide this kind of personal practice experience." You can put that into the AI so it represents you well: "we like to talk about procedures from a very consultative perspective, and we like to connect with our patients." You put that in the instructions and the AI reflects it. Over the course of thirty or sixty days of training in AI Studio, you can have the AI get very close to exactly how you or your staff would respond. It's confidence-building to have the AI do more and more work interacting with your patients without feeling like you're providing a bot to them — which is the fear you might have.

Dr. Randi: One of the terms I'm hearing more and more is agentic AI. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about — for those of us who don't study technology, what is it, and why should we care?

What is agentic AI, and why does it matter?

Dennis: Most of your listeners, and all of us, have gone in and interacted at least once with something like ChatGPT. That interaction is your classic AI interaction — I ask a question, I get a response. Agentic AI is when you take that type of thinking, but now the AI is able to perform tasks. That's the real game changer. Chatting with AI is one thing, but having that AI carry out work for you, carry out certain tasks — that's agentic AI. It uses its reasoning, the instructions, and maybe even information about your practice that you've given it, and it goes and makes decisions and performs actions for you.

How does Avery book appointments and own the task end-to-end?

Dennis: Let's take probably the most common action: booking an appointment. We've booked nearly 100,000 appointments through our AI, who we call Avery in the aesthetic space. Avery is incredibly capable — she not only interacts with patients, she has full access to your EMR. So the agentic piece is that Avery has the conversation, but then Avery actually goes and books the appointment, reserving the right room for the right provider on the right day, taking all of those pieces into consideration and carrying out the full task. That's really the difference between chatting with ChatGPT and using agentic AI to start leveraging more work within your business.

Dr. Randi: So that's really a real-world example of picking out the best time in the schedule for that patient based on what you know about them — it's not just robotic. We were talking about instant gratification, and this really gives them that, using agentic AI.

Dennis: Absolutely. And it's different from what you might have heard of as automation — an automation is "this happens and it triggers this action within the software." The agentic piece takes into consideration so many different pieces of information — the schedule, the providers, the rooms, all the instructions you gave it — and makes specific decisions on how to book, how to respond, how to maybe escalate to the office manager if it's a situation that needs escalating. It can do really well at making these decisions and helping you run the business, and that's where people feel like, "oh, it's like I have another staff member here to help us," because it's helping make some of these decisions and taking things off your plate — not just automating, but actually owning it. That's part of the instructions we give it: "hey, Avery, we want you to own this process. You have the information you need, we've given you the instructions, you're talking to the customer — we want you to own this task of creating a booking or making sure this person is using their vouchers over the next three months and driving more revenue into the practice."

Dr. Randi: If you could correct one misconception — because you're the expert — what would it be?

Dennis: Maybe that all AI is created the same. There's a stigma of, "if I've used ChatGPT or tried this other AI tool, they're all in the same state right now." One of the biggest things we try to explain is that we came out with our first AI agent, or AI employee, as we like to refer to them, in 2023. It's been three years of working out the kinks to make these AI employees like Avery as helpful as possible, and there's a big difference. We hear a lot of, "I've used AI before and I don't like how it works" — but you have to give certain ones a chance and see how far the technology has come, knowing it's only going to get better from here. We're in some of the early innings of AI, and there's a lot to come that's exciting about where this technology is going and how much it can do for you. This is going faster in many cases than those other waves of technology shifts, and the practices and consumers leaning into this are getting a lot of the benefit and a lot of the value. As a patient, I get a lot of value if I can do all this research ahead of time and I'm open to a lot more procedures because I've done my research. But as a practice, if I can leverage these things and adapt, I'm meeting a lot more of those patients and consumers in the right way with AI.

Why did OpenAI spotlight Podium's work?

Dr. Randi: You've definitely done something different, because there are countless companies building AI solutions today. Yet OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, chose to spotlight Podium's work. What do you think they saw here that was different?

Dennis: One of the things they expressed is the complexity we add to create that great patient experience. We talk about Avery as a single AI, but there are actually multiple things we're doing with AI in the background to make Avery kind of a superstar AI. When you give Avery feedback, all you have to do is tell her — "Avery, I want you to talk about pricing in this way" — and you just give her that feedback. We have another AI in the background taking that feedback and creating instructions based on your business information for Avery, putting that into her instructions. Those are some of the things OpenAI commented on — they said, "wow, you guys are really doing some complex things." That's making a difference when we look at AI that's helpful versus AI that's actually driving outcomes for practices, and that's what they wanted to highlight: an actual increase in revenue. It's over a 30 percent lift in revenue from AI, and a 45 percent increase in conversion using AI. Those are the real results. A lot of people say, "I'm using a lot of AI" — well, that's great, but are you actually getting the revenue, are you getting the uplift in conversion? We try to tie those two things together. AI can feel really empowering, but is it getting you the results? That's what we focus on.

What separates truly intelligent AI from everything else on the market?

Dr. Randi: So let's focus on this — what really separates truly intelligent AI from everything else? What are the telltale signs that a company is truly innovating with AI versus simply capitalizing on the excitement surrounding it right now?

Dennis: I'd say one of the biggest things you can tell right off the bat is the customization piece, because it's not easy — it can be very tricky to implement customization into AI. We feel like we've done a really good job with that, and a lot of the innovation we're putting into the product is around this, because an AI out of the box might sound good on a demo, but every business has a million different nuances that make their practice different. The AI has to adapt and accommodate those nuances, or it's going to drive you crazy — just like you'd get annoyed with a real employee if you had to say, "I told you that a thousand times, can you actually say it the way we want?" That customization piece is probably the make-or-break. If you can't tell an AI to do something different and trust that it will do it the right way the next time, it might just be something that sounds good or looks good out of the box, but you can't rely on it as something you're going to invest in your business with.

Dr. Randi: You're really building this end to end and changing the industry. So what do you think separates the companies leading the conversation from those that will fade away within the next couple of years?

Why did Podium build a full AI operating system instead of just an AI chatbot?

Dennis: I think a big piece — when we look at the journey — is that we built Avery as a great AI employee and AI agent, but we didn't have the whole EMR and operating-system piece within Podium. We had the phone system, a communication platform, and Avery, who could text customers and answer questions, but we didn't have the full EMR. So a couple of years ago we made a big investment. We believed that the companies that are going to be the best innovators with AI are going to be the system that operates the business, so that's when we made the shift and said, we have to build the full AI operating system — calendaring, charting, patient records, everything — and then Avery can help you do ten times more within your practice. That was a pivotal piece for us. I think there's going to be a big explosion of AI add-on products that you can add to your tech stack, and those might be nifty at times, but what you really want at the core is an operating system built on top of AI. That's been almost all of our investment over the last couple of years — to build that platform. So when you look at Avery now, and one of the new features we call Operator, you can just tell your Podium Operator agent to go update your schedule, update your provider schedule, or update some procedure information on your website, and it'll go do all of that for you — it'll just go do the tasks for you. That's where the innovation is really headed: telling your system to do things rather than going in and clicking a thousand buttons to get it done yourself.

Dr. Randi: This all matters because of the patient experience — what we can do better for patients and improve everything they experience all day. So what's one thing you've learned from real-world patient interactions that you never would have predicted?

Dennis: What I've learned is that sometimes the fear is, "if I give a lot of this communication to AI, how do I control that patient experience as a practice owner?" Some of these things are really important, and I sometimes see a practice owner struggle with wanting to maintain that great human-relationship aspect that's so important to the patient experience. What we've seen, and what I think we've proven, is that if you set it up the right way, AI can actually enhance that experience for your patients, because you can give them instant answers and take care of their needs really quickly with AI, get them into your office, and then you'll have more time with them to provide that in-person relationship-building piece as well. We've built these tools to enhance that experience, not diminish it.

What have patients embraced faster than expected?

Dr. Randi: And what is something that patients have embraced much faster than you even expected?

Dennis: I think it's building a relationship with AI, because it's there, it's really good, and it does a great job of being consultative. Many times we'll have patients come in and say, "hey, I've been working with Avery, she's been helping me out with all my questions — is she here, can I talk to her?" And it's like, "she's our AI assistant online." That's a surprising thing — patients are totally open to it. If you're getting the right information and being helped in the right way, patients do embrace it. It's been a fun, surprising thing — people come in and ask for Avery because she's been so helpful online, and that always gets me excited, because I know we can do a lot with that.

What will the patient experience look like five years from now?

Dr. Randi: Let's look ahead at what's coming next. Five years from now, what do you think will look completely different about the way patients interact with aesthetic clinics?

Dennis: I'm excited about where things are headed in a couple of ways. One, the AI models are only getting smarter — they're already really smart at doing almost all the tasks we want them to do. The other thing is they're getting faster, which is going to allow a lot of things to happen in real time, and we're going to try to build that into the product. You can imagine a patient experience where I walk into the practice, have a conversation, and the AI is tied into that conversation and can automatically check in the patient. The patient goes back, the doctor's talking through a procedure, everything's getting charted automatically, and by the time you walk to the front as a patient, your whole checkout experience is already built out because the AI is doing things in real time. Over the next two or three years we'll see AI doing the work in real time, which provides an excellent patient experience because it eliminates a lot of the downtime — most people just want to go in, see the people at your practice that they love, get their procedure done, and get on with their busy lives. If you go to a different service provider that doesn't have these real-time features built in, it's going to be a big difference in how you experience it.

The other thing is the ability to just tell the software and the AI what to do and have it go do everything we want. One of the coolest things I saw recently with our Operator product, which is in beta but launching soon, is a practitioner who said, "I want you to go do local market research for me — look at all the procedures everyone in the area is doing, help me understand the feedback we're getting on our reviews and our pricing, and see if we're competitively priced." AI did all the research, pulled everything together, gave all the insights, and said, "do you want me to go adjust these prices in the system? I'll take care of it for you." It can go do all of that within the system. We're really seeing limitless opportunities to leverage AI to help practice owners, and it's exciting where it's headed.

Dr. Randi: It is exciting — there are people who are afraid of AI, but I'm ready for all of it. When we talk about the future of AI, where do you think most people tend to overestimate it or underestimate it?

Dennis: It's moving incredibly fast, and even for us, as the tech company eating and breathing this every single day, it's still moving fast. So I do think there's an underestimation of how powerful it is and how fast it's working. We're going to look back and think, "I don't even know how I did ninety percent of the work I do in the practice now without the help of AI," because when I look at the roadmap and what we can accomplish, there are so many mundane tasks we're going to be able to take care of with AI, and that we already are. It's probably more underestimated than overestimated, even on our part — we'll see how fast it goes and how it plays out.

How is Podium's Operator agent optimizing an entire week's schedule?

Dr. Randi: For the Podium team, as we look ahead, what are you working on right now and over the next year or two that you're most excited about?

Dennis: The biggest thing right now that I have my hands on, playing with almost every day, is our Operator agent — we call it Operator. That's where you have AI built into your entire EMR operating system, and it can build any kind of custom report from any of the data in your system, and carry out almost any task within the EMR that any one of your staff members would do. I'll give you an example. We had a practice owner who said, "I'm going to give it a really hard task, one that takes me the entire day to do" — he goes in and tries to optimize the entire schedule for a week, looking at all the providers, all the procedures lined up, and the capacity within the different rooms. He said, "go through everything, Operator, look at the entire schedule and all the procedures, and come back with an optimized schedule." Operator went, did the work, and came back with the entire analysis of an optimized schedule. Not only that, it said, "do you want me to go do this?" He said yes, and it went and changed the schedule everywhere it needed to throughout the week, reached out to the customers whose appointments could be changed to optimize the schedule, and fully rebooked those patients. A task that would probably take an office manager an entire day, Operator just does in a few minutes. I don't know where the possibilities end with Operator, because we just see more and more things it can do within the system.

That's what we're most excited about — we really think it's all headed in that direction, and it requires building the platform on top of AI, not just plugging it into an older system. We feel fortunate that we've built a lot of these features with AI in mind, so we're not just bolting it onto something older — it's a brand-new system that's emerging, a new way to operate a practice. I'm excited to bring it to market over the next few weeks.

How can practices learn more about Avery and Podium?

Dr. Randi: I can't wait to see it. Well, Dennis, this has been such an educational conversation for me, for our industry, and for patients out there looking for a better experience. I think the fear of AI is behind us, hopefully, and we're all realizing how it streamlines so many things in our lives. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you'll come back and tell us where Podium is six months to a year from now and where AI is taking us, because I've really learned a lot. For everyone listening and watching, if you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a friend or colleague. I'm your host, Dr. Randi Boyette, and we'll see you next week on The Dr. Randi Show.

[Sponsored by Podium] Have you ever wondered what happens when you call or message a business after hours and someone responds instantly? That's exactly why Podium built Avery. Avery is Podium's AI employee, designed specifically for aesthetic clinics. She responds 24/7, answers questions, helps people get the information they need, and can even schedule appointments instantly. Whether it's late at night, over the weekend, or during a busy work day, Avery helps make sure every conversation gets a response. To learn more, visit aesthetics.podium.com and mention The Dr. Randi Show for exclusive introductory pricing.

Disclaimer: Dr. Randi Boyette holds a PhD and is a recognized leader in the aesthetics and medical industry. She is not a licensed medical doctor. All commentary and product recommendations are based on industry expertise and are provided for informational purposes only.