The demo is short. Here is what to make them show you rather than tell you.

A live booking into your EHR, placed while you watch. Everything else on a demo agenda can be prepared in advance. A booking landing in your own system, with your own credentials, in the seconds after the call, is the one thing that cannot be staged.

Watch the clock. Have the vendor place a booking and time how long until it is visible in your EHR. Then ask two follow-ups that matter more than the number: what the API latency is under load, and what the fallback is when a sync attempt fails.

Give the vendor your scenarios rather than accepting theirs: a new patient, a reschedule, an insurance question, and one caller who is upset. Listen for clarity, for whether the AI knows when to escalate, and for the moment it would have handed off to a person.

HIPAA and SOC 2 documentation, plus a description of how audit trails are produced and who can pull them. Ask during evaluation, not at contracting. A vendor that needs weeks to produce these has answered the question.

No. The cheapest option often carries weak support, thinner call quality, or limited compatibility with your EHR. Compare total cost of ownership instead: price plus support quality, implementation effort on your side, and how well it fits the way your practice actually books.

Whether your data is portable, whether your call recordings are accessible to you, and what contract length and notice period you are agreeing to. A system that works alongside your EMR rather than holding your data is the safer position to be in two years from now.