Virtual receptionist · Psychology and counselling practices

A psychologist virtual receptionist for the calls you cannot take in session.

A psychology or counselling day runs in back-to-back sessions, and for most of it the phone goes unanswered because picking it up would mean leaving the room. The people ringing are rarely casual callers. For someone seeking help, that first call can take a lot of nerve to make, and a voicemail greeting is an easy place to give up. A virtual receptionist for psychologists and counsellors puts a calm, trained person on that line, so the call ends with a first appointment, a waitlist place or a clear next step.

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What a psychology receptionist handles, and what stays with the clinician

Look for an answering service for psychologists and most of what turns up is message bureaus and AI phone agents. DotVA places something else: one person, dedicated to your practice, who knows your clinicians' openings and your intake rules, and who works to a written boundary between front-desk work and anything clinical. That boundary, and the safety protocol that sits behind it, is settled with you before the receptionist takes a single call.

On the receptionist's desk

Intake and the diary

  • Live answering in your practice's name across the hours you book, with each caller offered a session, a waitlist place or a call back at an agreed time
  • New-client enquiries: fees, session length, rooms or telehealth, and which funding you accept, all from answers you approve, ending in a booked first session or a waitlist place
  • Waitlist management: callers recorded with their availability, funding type and any preferred clinician, then offered openings in the order your practice sets
  • Referral and plan checks: GP referral letters and mental health treatment plans looked for before a first rebated session, with the referring rooms followed up when one is missing
  • Rebooking and cancellations, your cancellation policy explained in your own wording, and freed sessions offered on to the waitlist
  • Telehealth admin: video appointments flagged, links sent, and joining instructions resent when a client cannot find them minutes before a session

Stays with your clinicians

Clinical and risk calls

  • Any clinical conversation: what the caller is going through, whether therapy suits them, which approach or diagnosis applies
  • Matching your guide does not cover: a caller who does not fit the written intake criteria goes to an intake clinician or practice manager instead of being placed by guesswork
  • Risk and crisis: handled through the safety protocol your practice writes, with a clinician notified, and never assessed by the receptionist
  • Medicare, EAP and NDIS specifics: rebate amounts, session entitlements and funding approvals noted for your team rather than answered on the call
  • Reports and letters about a client's treatment, including anything sent back to a referring GP
  • Case notes and assessments, which stay outside the receptionist's access unless your practice decides otherwise

Answering the phone is one slice of private-practice admin. Medicare rebate processing, session-count letters to GPs and debtor follow-up are covered on the virtual assistant for psychologists guide, while EAP claim portals, private-pay invoicing and supervision logs sit on the virtual assistant for counsellors and psychotherapists guide. Other health settings have receptionist pages of their own: the physio virtual receptionist, the medical virtual receptionist for GP rooms, and the chiropractor virtual receptionist.

Where a psychology practice's phone quietly loses new clients

The first call that took courage to make

A person ringing about anxiety, grief or a relationship under strain has often rehearsed what they want to say. If that call reaches voicemail at 11am because every clinician is in session, they may try another practice, or put off asking for help again. Answered live, the receptionist takes their details kindly, explains how a first appointment works and what it costs, and books a time or a waitlist place before they hang up. They never ask a caller to explain their history; that conversation belongs with the clinician.

A waitlist that keeps moving

When your books are closed, a waitlist in a spreadsheet is only as good as the person who works it. Your receptionist records each caller's availability, funding and preferred clinician, offers openings in the order you set, and checks in with people who have been waiting, in wording you approve. If a session frees up at short notice, they ring down the list straight away instead of letting the hour sit empty, which in a practice built on fifty-minute sessions is an hour nobody gets back.

Referral paperwork sorted before session one

Under the Better Access initiative, a client generally needs a mental health treatment plan and a valid referral, usually from their regular GP, before a Medicare rebate applies. A few days before each first appointment, the receptionist checks both are on file, contacts the referring rooms when a letter has not arrived, and tells the client what is outstanding, so the opening session is spent on the client rather than on chasing documents.

Booked in the software you already run

Sessions go straight into Halaxy, Power Diary (now Zanda), Cliniko, Coreplus or Splose through a login your practice owns. Recurring fortnightly clients, couples appointments and video sessions stay set up the way your clinicians like them, and the reminders you already send keep going out. There is no second booking system and nothing to re-key at the end of a long day.

When a caller is distressed: the protocol your practice writes

Every psychology and counselling practice takes calls from people who are struggling, and now and then from someone who is not safe. A receptionist cannot and should not manage those calls clinically. What they can do is respond the same steady way every time, because the steps are written down before they start. The protocol belongs to your practice: your clinicians decide what counts as risk, who is told and how quickly. Our part is making sure it is in the receptionist's scripts from their first day, and that they understand exactly where their role ends.

  1. Listen calmly, without counselling

    The receptionist stays kind and unhurried, and does not offer advice, a view on what the caller should do, or reassurance about how things will turn out.

  2. Life in danger: Triple Zero (000)

    If a caller says that they or someone else is in immediate danger, the receptionist tells them to call 000 straight away, exactly as your protocol words it.

  3. Crisis support: Lifeline 13 11 14

    Lifeline answers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and also takes texts on 0477 13 11 14. Your practice can add any other services it prefers callers to be given.

  4. The clinician is told at once

    The treating clinician, a duty clinician or your practice manager is alerted by the route your procedure names, whether that is an urgent message, a call to the duty clinician's mobile, or both.

  5. Recorded where you choose

    What the caller said and what the receptionist did is written up in the place your practice nominates, so whoever follows up starts with the full picture.

  6. After hours, the greeting carries the numbers

    Your voicemail or after-hours message says plainly that the practice is not a crisis service and gives 000 and Lifeline, so nobody ringing at night hears only a beep.

DotVA does not provide crisis support, and a receptionist is no substitute for one. That is exactly why the protocol is agreed in writing before the first call, rather than improvised in the middle of a hard one.

What phone cover costs for a psychology or counselling practice

A sole practitioner's session days

Practising alone, the receptionist is your entire front desk for the hours you book. Two hours across the middle of each weekday, for example, when you are most likely to be in consecutive sessions, comes to 10 hours a week: about $520-736 a month at $12-17/hr AUD ex GST. That is the minimum placement, and a sensible first step for a solo psychologist or counsellor.

A group practice on one number

Several clinicians sharing a line usually means somebody needs to be on it all day, matching callers to the right person, running one shared waitlist and juggling rebookings across many diaries. Twenty hours a week is about $1,040-1,470 a month, and a full 40-hour week about $2,078-2,944. (Each monthly estimate is hours a week, times the rate, times 4.33.)

A message service is not intake

A message bureau notes who rang and leaves the call back to you, after a full day of sessions. A dedicated receptionist does the intake itself, checking funding, offering a first appointment in Halaxy, Zanda or Cliniko, and adding the caller to the waitlist when nothing is free, all while they are still on the phone.

Leave and sick days

While your receptionist is away, we arrange a substitute wherever we can, briefed on your intake rules and your safety protocol. Day to day, your practice decides what the receptionist works on; recruitment, pay, time tracking and billing, performance and replacement sit with DotVA.

A person during session hours, and a careful word on AI

Through the hours you book, the dedicated VA receptionist, at $12-17/hr AUD, holds the line and uses the gaps between calls for waitlist check-ins, referral follow-ups and reminders. After close, DotVA also offers an AI receptionist from $89/month plus setup, but we are cautious about it on a mental health line: our own guidance treats mental health conversations as work for people, not software. If a practice uses it at all, we keep it to booking requests and messages, behind a greeting that says the practice is not a crisis service and gives 000 and Lifeline. For plenty of practices a plain after-hours voicemail carrying the same numbers is the better choice, and we will say so on the call. The virtual receptionist hub compares human and AI cover in more detail.

Psychologist virtual receptionist questions

Can a psychologist virtual receptionist work inside Halaxy, Zanda, Cliniko, Coreplus or Splose?

Yes. The receptionist gets their own staff login in the practice software you already run, whether that is Halaxy, Zanda (which many practices still call Power Diary), Cliniko, Coreplus or Splose, and your practice decides what that login can open. For a psychology or counselling practice that is normally the diary, the waitlist, contact details, invoices and correspondence, while case notes, assessments and reports can be kept outside the receptionist's role altogether. Initial and ongoing sessions are booked into each clinician's open times, telehealth appointments are flagged so the right video link goes out, and a short admin note on the file records what each caller needed. The login belongs to your practice, so you can narrow it or close it whenever you like.

What does the receptionist do if a caller is distressed or at risk?

They follow the protocol your practice has written, and they never try to counsel, assess or offer clinical reassurance. A DotVA receptionist is not a clinician and your practice line is not a crisis service, so the steps are settled before the first call. If someone's life is in danger, the caller is told to ring 000. For crisis support at any hour, they are given Lifeline on 13 11 14. The treating clinician, or whoever your procedure names, is told straight away by the route your practice has chosen, and the receptionist records what was said and what they did. What counts as a risk call, who is notified and how quickly are decisions for your clinicians, not for the receptionist or for DotVA.

Can the receptionist check that a GP referral and mental health treatment plan are on file?

As an administrative check, yes. Before a client's first Medicare-rebated session, the receptionist looks for the referral letter and the treatment plan in the client file or the practice inbox, contacts the referring GP's rooms when a letter has not arrived, and lets the client know, in wording you approve, if something is still outstanding before the appointment. Anything that calls for a judgement, such as whether a referral is valid, how many rebated sessions a client has left or what they should ask their GP for, goes to the clinician or your practice manager. Callers asking about rebate amounts are never quoted a figure; the question is noted for your team. Counselling practices, whose clients more often pay privately, come through an EAP or use NDIS funding, can have the same check run against whatever paperwork those funders ask for.

How is client confidentiality protected with a receptionist in the Philippines?

By leaving confidential information where it already lives. The receptionist works inside your own practice software, phone system and inbox, on logins your practice creates and controls, so client records are never copied into a DotVA system or saved on anyone's personal device. Your practice decides exactly what the receptionist can see, and clinical notes can be kept out of reach entirely. The receptionist signs a confidentiality agreement before starting, receives credentials only through a password manager, and loses access the moment you switch it off. You also decide how much a new caller is asked on the phone: for example, a practice might want only contact details, availability and funding type, leaving the reason for referral to the GP letter or an intake form. Because the receptionist works from overseas, your practice stays accountable under the Australian Privacy Principles for how that access is handled, and we can provide a data-handling addendum if you want the arrangement in writing.

How is this different from an answering service for psychologists or counsellors?

An answering service takes a name, a number and a reason, then hands you a list to return after your last session, which can mean ringing a nervous first-time caller at 7pm when they have stopped expecting to hear back. A DotVA receptionist is one dedicated person who learns your practice: which clinicians have openings, who sees couples, children or adolescents, how the waitlist is ordered and which funding types you accept, all from a written guide you provide. Most calls end with a booked first session, a waitlist place or a clear next step rather than a message. It is also a person rather than an AI voice, which matters on a line where callers may have found it hard to ring at all.

Where is the receptionist based, and what hours do they work?

Your receptionist works from the Philippines (Manila) and keeps your practice's Australian hours, not their own. Manila is two hours behind AEST and three hours behind AEDT, so a 9am to 5pm day in Sydney or Melbourne is a 7am to 3pm shift there, or 6am to 2pm while daylight saving runs. If your clinicians offer early or evening sessions, cover can be booked at either end of the day, and the person you interview has already agreed to that shift. DotVA's own team in Melbourne recruits, onboards and bills, so your agreement is with an Australian company.

How much is a virtual receptionist for a psychology practice, and is there a lock-in?

Your receptionist costs $12-17 an hour AUD ex GST, and your practice pays only for the hours it books. Placements begin at 10 hours a week, roughly $520-736 a month; for full-time cover at 40 hours, expect about $2,078-2,944 a month. We usually match a receptionist to a practice in about 7-10 business days, with a $500 deposit credited to your first invoice. Nothing locks you in. You can end the placement at any time in the first 14 days after your receptionist starts, and from then on it is 30 days' notice. And if the person is not right for your practice within the first 30 days, we replace them at no charge. After-hours AI cover starts at $89 a month plus setup, kept on a psychology line to booking requests and messages.

Calls answered, sessions uninterrupted

Book a free discovery call

Jenn, DotVA's founder in Melbourne, takes these 30-minute calls herself. It helps to know roughly how many calls reach voicemail on a full session day, how long your waitlist has grown, and which practice software you use. With that, Jenn can tell you whether a dedicated receptionist suits your practice, how many hours would cover the gap and what it would cost, and walk you through how the privacy set-up and safety protocol work. Whatever you decide, the costs are on the table and there is nothing to sign.

Reading first? The psychology practice VA guide and the counselling practice VA guide cover the wider admin, and the virtual receptionist overview compares human and AI cover.

Prefer to pick a time yourself? Head to the discovery call page.

No obligation. No credit card. Jenn, the founder, reads every enquiry herself and replies inside one business day. Prefer to talk first? Call (03) 9961 6076, Melbourne line, business hours. DotVA is Boring Ventures Pty Ltd, ABN 67 671 943 758, Melbourne. How to verify us.