Saraswati Hospitals runs eight hospitals across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Their problem wasn't handling appointments — it was answering the phone at all. The front desk had a 23% missed-call rate, and most calls came in Telugu. AIVA picks up before the receptionist can.
My mother called for an appointment. Spoke Telugu the whole time. Got an appointment slot, an SMS confirmation, and directions to the hospital. She didn't realise she was talking to a machine until I told her after.
The challenge
Saraswati runs eight hospitals. Every appointment goes through a front-desk call. Patients ring up, give their name, their condition, the doctor they want, and a time. Receptionists check a calendar, confirm, and send an SMS.
The problem: 65% of inbound calls come in Telugu. Not every receptionist on every shift speaks fluent Telugu. A patient calling in at 11 AM might get a Telugu-speaking receptionist; the same patient calling at 8 PM might not.
The missed-call rate was running at 23%. Most of those callers weren't calling back — they were going to a competitor. The CFO had quoted ₹84 lakh/year in lost appointment revenue before AIVA went live.
23% missed-call rate at the front desk — peak hours and evenings the worst.
65% of calls in Telugu, but only a third of receptionists fluent.
CFO estimated ~₹84 lakh/year in lost revenue from missed appointment calls.
Front-desk staff turnover at 52%/year — the role was thankless and patients regularly took their frustration out on receptionists.
The setup
AIVA picks up Saraswati's main number on the first ring, every hour of every day. Detects the caller's language in their first phrase and stays in it for the whole conversation. Telugu, Hindi, or English — same brain, same context.
The HIS integration was the heavy lift. Saraswati's appointment system was an older on-prem deployment, but AIVA only needed two endpoints: findAvailableSlots(doctor, date) and bookAppointment(...). The IT team exposed both behind an internal API in two weeks.
Escalation rules were drafted with the CMO: any mention of chest pain, bleeding, unconscious, or pregnancy → hot-transfer to a human within 30 seconds. Anything else, AIVA books. The first live week ran in parallel with the front desk (AIVA + human both got the call) until the team was confident.
The outcomes
The single best piece of feedback we've received: “Your hospital is the only place where someone answers the phone in Telugu, every time.” Patients assume it's because we hired more people. Actually we hired one — AIVA.
— Dr. Venkatesh Rao, COO, Saraswati Hospitals