Customer Overview
eAssist Dental Solutions is a leading provider of outsourced dental billing, revenue cycle management, and practice growth services. The company supports thousands of dental practices across the United States, helping them collect more revenue while reducing the administrative burden on their teams.
As eAssist grew, its inbound sales operation faced a familiar constraint. Prospective customers expected immediate answers, but providing continuous coverage traditionally required additional sales headcount.
eAssist partnered with Atonom to determine whether an AI Cloud Employee could respond to inbound demand, qualify prospective customers, book meetings, and generate revenue without adding another SDR.
The Challenge
Inbound demand does not follow business hours.
Prospective customers contacted eAssist through chat, email, forms, and phone. Response times depended on when a representative was available, which meant high-intent buyers could wait minutes or hours before receiving a response.
The sales team also spent time handling billing questions, support requests, and other inquiries that did not belong with sales.
This created three operational problems:
- High-intent prospects were not always engaged at the moment of interest.
- Sales representatives spent valuable time qualifying and routing inbound conversations.
- Expanding coverage would normally require additional headcount, shifts, and management.
eAssist had previously tested another AI vendor. While the technology showed promise, the system required excessive internal management and failed to deliver a scalable operating model.
The problem was not simply finding another chatbot. eAssist needed an autonomous employee capable of owning the work.
The Atonom Solution
Atonom deployed Emma, an AI Cloud Employee designed to manage inbound engagement across website chat, email, and phone.
Emma:
- Responds to prospective customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
- Engages new inquiries in under two minutes.
- Identifies sales opportunities and separates them from billing, support, and general inquiries.
- Qualifies prospective customers through natural conversations.
- Books meetings directly onto sales representatives’ calendars.
- Continues conversations across multiple communication channels.
- Escalates qualified opportunities when human expertise is needed.
Emma did not require eAssist to build another internal AI management function. Atonom handled implementation, training, monitoring, and continued optimization while Emma operated as part of the existing revenue organization.
Results
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4.4x Revenue Generated per Dollar Invested
- Emma generated $4.37 in closed revenue for every dollar invested in the deployment.
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55% Lower Cost Than Additional SDR Capacity
- Emma provided continuous coverage across chat, email, and phone for less than half the fully burdened monthly cost of adding another SDR.
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14 Workdays Returned To the Sales Team
- Through July, Emma eliminated 112 hours of repetitive qualification, routing, and inbound response work, returning the equivalent of 14 full workdays to the sales organization.
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24/7/365 Inbound Availability
- eAssist expanded from business-hour coverage to an always-on inbound operation without adding shifts or headcount.
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Under 2 Minutes Lead Response Time
- Emma reduced inbound response time from minutes or hours to under two minutes, allowing eAssist to engage prospective customers while their interest was highest.
Customer Perspective
“Emma helped us create immediate coverage across our inbound channels while removing repetitive work from the sales team. More importantly, the deployment generated measurable revenue. We had a 315% return on our investment. This was not another AI experiment. Emma became a productive part of our revenue operation.”
Mike Hall, CRO, eAssist Dental Solutions
Why This Matters
Most companies do not have an inbound lead problem. They have a response problem. eAssist deployed Emma to engage prospects instantly, qualify demand, route non-sales inquiries, and book meetings around the clock. The result was an always-on inbound operation at 55 percent lower cost than another SDR, generating more than four dollars in closed revenue for every dollar invested. That is the difference between buying an AI tool and hiring an AI Cloud Employee.
