Healthcare
How a plastic surgeon converts 52% of WhatsApp inquiries into booked consultations
An audience of 145,000 sends messages at every hour of the day. Dr. Ivan La Rusca answers all of them with an AI Sales Agent that qualifies each inquiry and books the consultation in the chat. One in two people who write end up on the calendar.
Dr. Ivan La Rusca Plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery · 5 min read What they wanted
- Answer every inbound WhatsApp message, including outside clinic hours
- Stop losing prospective patients to slow or missed replies
- Qualify inquiries before they reach clinic staff
- Turn satisfied patients into public reviews without manual chasing
What we built
- Gioia, an AI Sales Agent trained on every treatment and service offered
- Automated qualification and first-appointment booking, end to end
- First agent built and launched in under one week
- A second agent that requests reviews from satisfied patients
Who Dr. La Rusca is
Dr. Ivan La Rusca is a specialist in plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery with over 25 years of practice. His clinic performs more than 1,000 procedures a year, and his social channels reach an audience of over 145,000 followers.
The problem: an audience larger than any front desk
An audience of 145,000 people generates inbound messages continuously, and not on clinic hours. Prospective patients ask about costs, treatments and availability at every hour of the day, in volumes no front desk can absorb without something going missing.
In aesthetic surgery, a missed reply is not a missed ticket. The unit value of a single patient is high, and someone who doesn't get an answer doesn't complain or follow up. They go quiet, and they book somewhere else. These losses never appear in any report, because there is nothing to count. The clinic only ever sees the patients who made it through.
Manual triage also meant staff time spent on the same repeating questions, long before any of it turned into a booking.
The solution: answer, qualify, and book in the chat
Dr. La Rusca has been an Irelia client since August 2024. The first agent went live in under a week.
An agent that qualifies and books, not just answers
Gioia is trained on the full catalogue of treatments and services. She handles the inbound conversation, profiles the request, identifies when a patient is ready to proceed, collects the information the clinic needs, and books a first appointment with the doctor directly. Staff are notified when a patient is ready: they receive prepared prospects, not raw inquiries.
Full WhatsApp coverage, no hours
Every conversation that lands on WhatsApp gets a response. Out of 658 conversations in the reference period, all 658 were answered. Messages that arrive at 23:00 are handled at 23:00.
Patients know they're talking to an AI
The agent doesn't present itself as a human being, and this was never hidden from patients. It's a deliberate choice, and the conversion figure is the argument for it: one in two people who write book a consultation while knowing an AI is on the other side. Speed and availability turn out to be worth more to a prospective patient than the impression of talking to a person.
A second agent that closes the loop
A separate agent asks satisfied patients for a review. The two agents form a cycle: Gioia brings the patient in, the review agent turns the satisfied patient into public proof, and that proof feeds the audience that produces the next patient.
The results: 341 consultations in seven months
Between 1 January and 24 July 2026, across 191 days of activity, the setup handled 658 conversations with a 100% response rate and produced 341 booked consultations: a 52% conversion rate and an average of 54 new consultations per month.
Most AI agents are switched on with enthusiasm and quietly abandoned within three months. This one has been booking patients for nearly two years.
At a glance
- Client
- Dr. Ivan La Rusca
- Industry
- Healthcare / Plastic surgery
- Location
- Italy
- Channel
- Irelia client since
- August 2024
- Time to first agent live
- Under one week
- Reference period
- 1 Jan to 24 Jul 2026 (191 days)
Want the same for your clinic?
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