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Glossary
Phone coverage has its own vocabulary, and most of it is used loosely. Here is what each term means on this site, in one sentence, with what Lydoh actually does spelled out underneath.
Lydoh is an AI receptionist and answering service made by Zuzis LLC that answers calls 24/7 on a dedicated number, answers only from the content a workspace has approved, and captures what each caller needs. Medical practices also get after-hours on-call triage.
All 22 terms
Answering and messages
The words for answering a phone line on someone else's behalf, and for turning each call into something a person can act on.
An AI phone assistant is software that answers a phone number, holds a spoken conversation with the caller, and acts on what it hears.
It is not voicemail, because the caller gets answers and questions in real time. It is not a phone tree, because there is nothing to press. What it can do depends on what it is allowed to look up and what it is allowed to write down.
Lydoh is an AI receptionist and answering service that answers calls 24/7 on a dedicated number and captures what each caller needs.
An AI receptionist is an AI phone assistant doing front desk work: greeting callers, answering routine questions, taking messages, and passing the rest to a person.
The name describes the job, not the technology, which is why the same product is sold as an AI receptionist, a virtual receptionist, or an AI answering service. Front desk calls repeat more than any other kind, which is why this is the first phone job software took on.
Lydoh hands off to a human line during business hours when a caller needs a person.
An answering service is a company or system that answers the calls a business cannot take itself, usually after hours, on weekends, or when the line is already busy.
Traditional services staff a call center with operators who read from a script and pass messages along. They usually bill per minute or per call, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one.
Lydoh runs as software on a published monthly plan, from $49/mo for a practice: Lydoh After Hours, $99/mo for nights and weekends, or Lydoh Frontdesk, $249/mo for every call. Each is sized to a typical practice, and there is a 14-day free trial.
Message taking is writing down who called, how to reach them, and what they wanted, so that someone can call back.
A useful message is structured rather than recorded: a name, a working callback number, and a reason. That is the difference between a list a staff member can work through and a voicemail box somebody has to sit and listen to.
Lydoh writes each call into a structured record and texts the message to staff when the call ends.
A phone tree, or IVR (interactive voice response), is a recorded menu that asks callers to press or say an option before they reach anyone.
It sorts calls by department without a person, which is why large organizations use one. In a small office where every branch ends at the same front desk, the menu mostly adds wait time before the caller can say what they need.
Lydoh has no menu: it answers in conversation and asks what the caller needs.
An appointment request is a caller's ask for a specific time, captured in full but not yet booked.
The record holds the name, callback number, service, and preferred time, and a person confirms it against the real schedule. Leaving the booking with a person means no calendar integration is required and no software can double-book a day it cannot fully see.
Lydoh captures appointment requests and texts staff to confirm them. It needs no calendar or email integration, by design.
A handoff is passing a live call from the assistant to a person, without the caller hanging up and dialing again.
It matters when a caller asks for a human, when the question sits outside what the assistant is allowed to answer, or when something is urgent. The alternative, telling a caller to try again later, is how calls get lost.
Lydoh hands off to a human line during business hours. On screen it is a handoff; out loud, Lydoh says it will connect you.
A knowledge base is the approved content an assistant is allowed to answer from.
Scoping answers to approved content is what stops an assistant guessing: if something is not in there, the correct behavior is to say so and take a message. Each business needs its own, because the true answer to a question like whether you take walk-ins is different in every building.
Each Lydoh workspace has its own knowledge base, and Lydoh answers only from that workspace's approved content.
After-hours and medical
The vocabulary of on-call coverage for clinical practices, where the job is to tell routine from urgent and reach a person for the urgent few.
After-hours answering is covering a phone line outside business hours, on nights, weekends, and holidays.
Most calls in those hours are routine and can wait for the morning. A few cannot, and the whole job is telling the two apart quickly and reaching somebody for the rest.
Lydoh answers around the clock on the same number, and medical practices get after-hours triage with escalation to the provider on call.
On-call escalation is reaching the person responsible for urgent matters outside business hours, and confirming that they got the message.
A text nobody reads is not coverage. Real escalation dials, waits for someone to acknowledge, moves to the next person when there is no answer, and records every attempt with a time on it.
Lydoh dials the provider on call, waits for acknowledgement, moves down the rotation when nobody answers, and keeps an audit log of every attempt.
An on-call rotation is the schedule that says which person covers urgent calls at a given hour.
Practices run them as a single provider, a weekly turn, or a fixed day of the week, then break the pattern for holidays and coverage swaps. The overrides matter more than the pattern, because exceptions are what actually happen.
Lydoh resolves the rotation when the call arrives, and holiday overrides always win over the regular pattern.
911 deflection is telling a caller with an emergency to hang up and call 911 before anything else happens on the call.
It goes first because every second spent taking a message is a second not spent getting help. It is a fixed instruction read to everyone, not a judgment about one caller's symptoms.
Every after-hours clinical call with Lydoh opens with the 911 reminder.
Telephone triage is sorting calls into urgent and routine so that the urgent ones reach somebody now.
Clinical triage by a nurse assesses symptoms against protocols and is licensed work. The safe version for software asks the caller whether the matter is urgent and routes on that answer, without assessing symptoms and without giving advice.
Lydoh lets the caller decide whether a matter is urgent or routine, and never gives medical advice.
Telephone E/M codes are the CPT codes a clinician uses to bill evaluation and management of a patient done by phone.
The time-tiered telephone codes 99441, 99442 and 99443 were deleted for 2025. Audio-only visits are now reported with 98008-98015, leveled by medical decision making or total time, and 98016 covers a brief virtual check-in. Medicare pays 98016 but not 98000-98015, and points to office/outpatient E/M codes with modifier 93 for audio-only telehealth.
For urgent after-hours calls, Lydoh records the provider-to-patient talk time for your biller; the biller selects the code.
A prescription refill request is a patient's ask to renew a medication they already take, captured for the practice to approve or deny.
A workable record has the patient, date of birth, medication, and pharmacy, which is what a staff member needs to look it up. Approval is a clinical decision and stays with the practice.
Lydoh takes refill requests for clinical practices into a structured queue, and never discusses dosing or promises approval.
A HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, or BAA, is a contract in which a vendor handling protected health information for a practice agrees to safeguard it and to report breaches.
Any vendor that touches patient information on a practice's behalf needs one. There is no such thing as HIPAA certification, so the signed agreement and the vendor's actual handling of data are what a practice can check.
A BAA is available for medical practices using Lydoh.
Call recording disclosure is telling the people on a call that it is being recorded, before the recording starts.
State laws differ: some require only one party to consent, and others require every party, which in practice means the caller has to be told. An announcement at the top of the call is the simple way to satisfy the stricter rule everywhere.
Lydoh speaks a recording disclosure at the start of every call by default, in wording the workspace controls.
Texting patients
The words for texting patients from a practice number: the conversation itself, the confirmation that ends a request, and the carrier rules that come before the first text.
Two-way patient texting is text messaging between a practice and its patients in which the patient can reply and staff answer from a shared inbox.
It differs from one-way alerts, which only send. A shared inbox matters because a reply sent to a practice number nobody watches is a question nobody answers.
Lydoh keeps one thread per patient, in a Messages tab and on the request it belongs to, and alerts staff to a reply without including the patient's words.
Missed call text back is an automatic text to someone who called and did not get through, saying the business saw the call and will call back.
Most tools text everyone nobody answered. The text should name the practice and say when someone will call back, and leave out why the person called, because it can show on a lock screen.
Lydoh answers every call first, and texts back only callers who hung up before leaving anything, on mobile numbers, at most once a day per number.
An appointment confirmation text is a short message that tells a patient their appointment is booked, with the day and time and a way to change it.
It is sent once the slot is set, unlike a reminder, which comes shortly before the visit. Like a reminder, it should carry the practice name and the time, and leave out the reason for the visit.
When the front desk closes a request as booked in Lydoh, it can text the patient a confirmation with the date and time, and staff see the exact text before it sends.
A2P 10DLC (application-to-person, 10-digit long code) is the US carrier standard that requires a business to register before it texts customers from an ordinary local phone number.
The business registers a brand, identified by details such as its legal name and EIN, and a campaign describing what it will text. Unregistered texts from these numbers are blocked.
A practice enters its business details in Lydoh's Settings, and Lydoh submits the registration to The Campaign Registry through Twilio. Texting starts while the carriers review.
An opt-out is a recipient's request to stop receiving texts from a sender, usually made by replying STOP.
Carrier guidelines ask senders to say in the message how to opt out and to honor the request, including common variations such as "unsubscribe" or "cancel".
Every Lydoh patient text ends "Reply STOP to opt out.", and a number that replies STOP is not texted again.
FAQ
Lydoh is an AI receptionist and answering service made by Zuzis LLC that answers calls 24/7 on a dedicated number, answers only from the content a workspace has approved, and captures appointment requests, messages, and refill requests for the people it works for.
No: Lydoh is software that says it is an assistant on every call, never claims to be a person, and hands a caller off to a human line during business hours.
Lydoh is made by Zuzis LLC, the company behind VoiceboxMD, which builds phone software for medical, dental and veterinary practices.
How to cite this page: Lydoh Glossary, Zuzis LLC, https://lydoh.com/glossary. Every definition links to its own anchor, so a single term can be cited on its own.
A term missing, or a question about your account? Ask on the support page, or read who builds Lydoh.
Last reviewed: October 2026
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Fourteen days free. Your own number in minutes. Private by default, with a BAA for medical practices.