Crewley › Case study
The practice whose software had stopped telling it the truth
Winstanley & Son is an independent practice in Dingle, Liverpool. I own it, and I built these agents with my own money, on my own patients, because I was the one drowning in admin. Every fact on this page comes out of our own systems, and you're welcome to come and watch it run.
The finding nobody expected
The dashboard said everything was fine.
Reading the practice management software's underlying data directly, instead of trusting its dashboard, found recall flags that a routine housekeeping setting had switched off. No report surfaced it. The flags were reset, the patients went back into the normal recall cycle, and the check now runs automatically so it can't drift again. The size of that gap is a number for the audit call, not a web page.
Illustration with sample data
- Asked
- Saturday opening hours
- Answer
- 9 till 4, from your hours ✓
- Wants
- Eye test for her son
- Sent
- Booking link by text ✓
- For you
- Price of varifocals, call back
Illustration with sample data
What runs now
Agents on the phone, the inbox, the lab and the recall list.
A patient response agent answers routine questions, order updates and booking requests at any hour, and sends anything clinical or complaint-shaped to a person. A reception agent lets staff manage orders and notes in plain English, with every action confirmed by a button. The voice receptionist has answered the phone since 23 August 2026, at a peak of around 25 calls a day. A daily brief posts the open tasks every morning.
What went wrong, and was fixed
It said we don't stock Oakley. We do.
Early on, the patient agent told a real patient the practice didn't stock Oakley frames. That didn't get a quiet tweak. It became a standing rule: no agent may state a fact it can't source, or claim something happened unless the system has checked it did. The fix went through evidence, specification, roughly 350 logged test runs, independent review and an isolated launch, and went live certified within 48 hours. First day live: zero errors.
You're not buying the automations. You're buying the faults that were found and fixed before you got them.
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In detail
The rest of the story.
Why did Winstanley & Son start automating?
The practice competes on care rather than price, so its most valuable asset is its relationship with patients already on its books. The project started with the honest maths of hiring. The work waiting for new staff was admin, and I wanted everyone on the floor facing patients.
What did the audit find in the ad account?
Three stacked faults that were invisible from the surface. The conversion tag and the conversion action disagreed on an event name, so conversions weren't counted. The mobile booking page was missing its tracking tag. And the campaign carried 498 negative keywords, including "varifocal", on a varifocal campaign. The practice was paying to advertise and paying again to block its own buyers.
What does the system never touch?
The practice management software stays. Clinical records, prescriptions, sight-test data and medical notes stay inside it. The recall audit read scheduling flags, never medical records. See how it works and the Honest AI position.
How much testing went into it?
An estimated 50 to 80 hours went into testing, certification and investigation. That's a reconstructed estimate, not logged time.
How does this compare with a chain's head office?
Behind every large chain branch sits a team doing recall, response handling and data hygiene that no independent could staff alone. Counting the roles these agents now cover comes to six to eight roles' worth of coverage, not six to eight salaries, running for less than the cost of one part-time hire. Ownership, independence and profits stay with the practice.