Uriah Guilford is a licensed therapist, group practice owner, author of The Productive Practice, and the "Head Nerd" at Productive Therapist, a virtual assistant company that helps therapists streamline and scale. He's also a tech enthusiast, and he has spent years working on a request his team has heard since day one: can someone answer the phone every time a potential client calls?

We talked with him on the Berries podcast about one of the biggest bottlenecks in private practice: the intake process. The conversation covered burnout, the real costs of different intake setups, and what it takes to build an AI receptionist that stays kind, careful, and on script.

Here are the lessons we took from it.

Lesson 1: Burnout Can Build Around the Sessions, Not Only in Them

Uriah started a solo practice in 2008 and a group practice in 2015. By 2017, he was struggling with burnout. He was seeing 25 clients himself, handling all the intake calls, and doing everything else in the business, down to cleaning the stains on the carpet. In his words, it was exciting and fun, but it was just too much.

His fix was to hire a friend to handle intake. He soon noticed that his friends and colleagues needed the same thing: part-time admin support for intake. That need grew into Productive Therapist.

His story is a reminder that burnout in private practice can come from the work around the sessions, too. For him, that meant the intake calls and everything else it took to run the business.

Lesson 2: A Fast Response Is a Form of Care

From day one, Uriah's team focused on responding faster to people reaching out for help. They promise a reply within 24 hours and usually respond in about two to three hours, much faster than a very busy therapist can.

He has long spoken about immediate response as the highest level of customer service. But underneath it is something more human. "At the heart of it, we want to help people," he said. "We want to be there when they need us."

For Uriah, that's why intake matters so much. It's how a practice shows up for someone at the moment they reach out.

Lesson 3: Every Intake Option Comes With a Trade-Off

Uriah walked through the main ways practices handle new inquiries. Each one has strengths and limits:

• Online scheduling tools have been his favorite fix for about ten years, and he still recommends them for busy solo practitioners. They usually cost $10–20 a month, and they let people take an action that feels like progress. He noted that some, such as Acuity and ScheduleOnce, offer HIPAA-compliant options.

• Answering services and virtual receptionist companies can answer the phone every time. But callers reach a different person each time, and these services can't access the practice's EHR. Uriah said costs usually range from about $2 to $4 per minute, which adds up.

• An in-house intake coordinator is important for many group practices but isn't realistic for most solo practices. It's a serious investment once benefits, sick time, and PTO are included. Even then, one person can take only one call at a time, takes lunch breaks, and goes on vacation.

As Uriah put it, there are pros and cons to all of them. An in-house coordinator, for example, is a good solution, but it's expensive and still doesn't give 100% coverage.

Lesson 4: Good AI Starts With Good Boundaries

Uriah's newest answer is Simple Intake, an AI receptionist and website chatbot. He was candid that voice agents weren't great until recently. What changed was the quality of the voices, shorter response delays, and better ways to train the agents. It clicked for him when he realized an AI agent could book a consultation on a therapist's calendar.

For clinicians who don't want AI talking to potential clients, his answer is about limits. This is a narrow use case. The agent follows the practice's script and knowledge base, and it can't search the internet or make things up. A setting that controls how creative it can be stays at zero. "We don't want any creativity," he said.

He almost always builds in a "human handoff," too. If a caller asks for a person, the agent can transfer the call to an internal number to leave a message, or directly to someone available to answer. The agent's instructions also include a section on handling crisis calls, which he noted is important in mental and behavioral health.

Lesson 5: The Real Work Is in the Setup

Each agent starts with a knowledge base built from a scan of every page of the practice's website, plus its FAQ page. That covers who the practice is, who it serves, its fees, and its insurance. The agent can also retrain on its own when the website changes.

Then comes the prompt, which Uriah called a lot of the "secret sauce." It sets the agent's role, the call flow, and how to treat callers: with empathy, understanding, and, as Uriah put it, unconditional positive regard. Each prompt is customized, then tested by calling it again and again as a pretend client. When Kym and others tried to "break it," it kept responding with empathy and redirecting toward a consultation.

Uriah is clear about limits here, too. He doesn't recommend it for scheduling first therapy sessions, which belong in the EHR. It's best for initial consultations, and it doesn't integrate with most EHRs right now.

Lesson 6: Screening Saves Time Before the Consultation

The receptionist can collect a caller's name and email, plus custom details like their insurance provider. That information goes into the contact record, so whoever follows up already has it. Practices can also turn on call recordings and transcripts for quality assurance.

For practices with an intake coordinator, it can be the front line before a call is transferred. As Uriah put it, the screening ability is very useful because it saves time for the therapist or the intake team.

Lesson 7: Technology Should Empower, Not Replace

Uriah was honest that the tool isn't perfect. "This is the worst it's gonna be," he said. "It's only gonna get better." He was just as clear about its purpose: "The intention is not to replace the intake coordinator or the therapist doing a consultation."

The same goes for his other current focus, helping therapists build an AI advisory team for business coaching, financial guidance, HR, and marketing. The goal isn't to replace a lawyer, an HR team, or a marketing person. It's to give therapists the tools to do what they want to do.

At Berries, we share that view of technology: it should support clinicians and the care they provide, not take their place.

Why the First Call Matters

Uriah's work starts from an idea he has shared for years: the highest level of customer service is an immediate response, and people reaching out for help deserve one.

His approach pairs that speed with clear boundaries and warmth: an agent that stays on script, responds with empathy, and hands callers to a person when they ask. Whatever the tool, the goal stays the same. As he put it, it's about being there when people need us.

Connect with Uriah Guilford:

Website: Simple Intake | Productive Therapist

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uguilford

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uriahguilford/

Listen to the full conversation with Uriah Guilford on the Berries Podcast:

Berries Blog: https://heyberries.com/podcast/episode/how-to-build-an-ai-powered-intake-process-with-uriah-guilford

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-build-an-ai-powered-intake-process-with/id1818368656?i=1000743297065

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2n9Gp3llEybTWoZPkzL3S2?si=rpfVhHl0Qn-GnMOawDTB4Q

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeHmsYYQq6Y&list=PL7dZwhIyfxLZgTGo_83A5ZowIKvDpko4S