PamVA is a 24/7 receptionist and booking system for counselling and therapy practices. It answers while you're with a client, introduces itself as your practice's AI assistant, books the session, and states your fees plainly. If a caller is in crisis, it stops booking and gives them the right numbers — 9-8-8, BC's 310-6789, or 9-1-1 first when someone's in immediate danger — then alerts you. It never counsels, and it never pretends to be you. Set up in person, right here in the Okanagan.
14-day free trial · no credit card · no audio kept — transcript only · data stays in Canada
You're in session most of the working day — that's the job. So the person who calls your practice reaches a beep, and a 2016 audit of 320 therapists' phone lines found most callers never get anything back. Here's the part that stings: that caller may have spent weeks working up to it. Over half of Canadian adults are anxious about phoning a stranger — two-thirds of 18-to-34s (Research Co., 2023). They won't leave a message, and they won't call twice. They dial the next name on the list.
Your own numbers appear in your dashboard from day one — every call, every booking.
The whole loop runs while you're in the room with a client. You read it back afterward, word for word.
Evenings, weekends, mid-session. It picks up in seconds, sounds warm, and introduces itself as your practice's AI assistant in its first breath — never as you, never as a counsellor. And any caller can say "I'd rather leave a message for a person." That works, every time: the message reaches you, and nobody loses access to your practice for saying no to an AI.
Clients, sessions, practitioners — it speaks the way a practice does. It offers your real open slots, books the right length for a first session versus a follow-up, and asks only what a front desk would: contact details and a general reason for reaching out. Nothing clinical, ever. Ask about cost and it answers plainly — your fee, and how extended-health receipts work.
The client gets a confirmation they answer with one letter. With discreet messaging — on by default for counselling — the text shows your practice name and the time. Never the service, never the specialty. A lock screen stays private. For virtual sessions, the video link rides in the confirmation and every reminder.
The call lands in your dashboard as a full written transcript — no audio is kept, and the caller is told the call is transcribed. Reviewable, deletable, on an append-only audit trail. If you'd have answered something differently, you fix it in one sentence and it never says it again.
Your voicemail says nothing at 11pm. Pam says 9-8-8, every time — and writes down that she said it. Here is the exact protocol, because "trust us" isn't an answer a counsellor should accept.
The moment crisis language is detected, booking, payments, and scheduling switch off for the rest of that conversation. Pam never books that call. This is enforced by the system itself, not left to the AI's judgment on the day.
Someone in immediate danger hears 9-1-1 first — with an offer to stay on the line while they dial. Otherwise the caller gets Canada's crisis lines by name and number — 9-8-8, then BC's 310-6789 — and an offer to text the numbers so they're on the caller's phone after hangup.
You're alerted immediately — quiet hours don't apply to a crisis. The conversation is flagged in your dashboard, and the transcript is your record that the protocol ran, word for word. What it tells the caller about you is honest too: the practice will see your message — never a promised callback time.
Answering is table stakes. Here's what actually moves the month.
Two-thirds of younger Canadian adults are anxious about phone calls — and those are your callers. A missed call gets an instant text back, and the whole booking can happen over SMS or web chat. On the $69 plan, that's the entire product: the client who couldn't face the phone still becomes a client.
Clients are often afraid to ask what therapy costs, and nobody enjoys raising it. Pam states your session fee plainly and explains the extended-health reality — clients pay the practice and claim it back through their plan. The awkward conversation happens before the first session, not during it.
When a client cancels, the freed slot is offered to your waitlist automatically, by text. The hour that used to sit empty gets refilled while you're still in session. One refill a week is more than the whole subscription.
Weekly same-time clients keep their slot without anyone rebooking it by hand. Virtual sessions get their video link in the confirmation and every reminder — no client hunting through email at 6:58pm. In-person or online is a per-booking choice.
Texts show your practice name and the time — the service and your specialty never appear on a lock screen. Review requests, on for salons and plumbers, are off by default for counselling: Pam will never ask a therapy client to rate their experience on Google.
"I'd rather leave a message for a person" is honoured instantly — no persuasion, no runaround. The message lands with you, the caller keeps full access to the practice, and Pam is honest about what happens next: you'll see it, on your schedule.
New clients answer your intake questions when they book, and on the Pro plan complete your full intake and consent forms before they ever sit down — so the first session starts as a session, not paperwork. A ready-made consent paragraph covering the AI assistant, written for your intake package, is rolling out with the compliance pack.
The real hesitation isn't price. It's whether anything with "AI" in the name can sit near client information and survive your professional body's scrutiny. BCACC published AI guidance for counsellors in March 2025 — a checklist of hard questions. PamVA was built to answer them by mechanism, not by badge:
No audio of your clients is ever kept. What exists is a written transcript, disclosed to the caller at the top of the call, living in your dashboard — reviewable and deletable.
Canadian company, Canadian infrastructure. When the guidance asks where your data centre is, you have a one-word answer. And we'll never tell you Canadian hosting is "legally required" — it isn't. It's a trust decision, and we made it.
The assistant introduces itself as your practice's AI assistant, first thing, on every channel. It is never mistakable for you or for a counsellor — which is exactly the standard the guidance sets.
A caller can decline the AI and still reach your practice — message delivered, text-back sent, nothing lost. The guidance asks for a human path that doesn't cost the client access. This is it.
Your client conversations are never used to train any model — not by us, and the AI services underneath process them under business terms that don't train on them either.
Read any conversation, delete any conversation, export your data. Your college holds you responsible for your records wherever they live — so the system is built on the assumption that they're yours, not ours.
BCACC's 2026 fee guide puts an individual session at $140–225. Published research says the average client stays about five sessions — so one caller who books instead of hitting voicemail is worth roughly $700–1,100 to the practice. PamVA's Front Desk plan is $149 a month, flat. Intake calls are long, and that's fine: there's no per-minute meter to punish a caller who needs time.
The alternatives: a human answering service meters minutes and is paid whether or not the caller books. Therapy-specialist human intake runs four figures a month and works office hours — while the calls you're missing come at 9pm. The AI receptionists in this space are American: minute-metered, framed around HIPAA (not the law in BC), with crisis scripts written for American callers. This one is Canadian, flat-priced, and books.
Count last month's missed calls and unfilled cancellations, multiply by your session fee. That's the number to weigh this against — and your dashboard runs it for you from day one.
No per-minute meter, no overage bill.
Text booking starts at $69 — less than half of one session, for every missed call answered.
One flat CAD price — solo practice or group, same bill. The crisis handoff, AI disclosure, and human opt-out are on every plan, because safety isn't something we'd sell as an upgrade.
Every missed call answered by text — and booked, without interrupting a session.
Every call answered 24/7 — and your whole front desk: waitlist, deposits, packs.
Practice tooling: session notes, consent forms, telehealth, groups.
14-day free trial · no card · unlimited practitioners on every plan · full pricing & founding offer →
We're building this vertical in the open. These are in progress — ask about any of them on your demo call:
Some callers will want a person, and for them there's a path that always works: say "I'd rather leave a message for a person" and Pam takes the message without a word of persuasion — it reaches you, and the caller loses nothing. But consider who's calling a counselling practice: over half of Canadian adults are anxious about phoning a stranger at all, and many would rather text than talk. For them, a warm answer at 9pm — or a booking finished entirely over text — beats a voicemail beep that wastes the courage it took to dial. Pam never pretends to be human, sounds natural, and books in a couple of minutes. Call the demo line and judge it as the caller.
Booking stops — the system locks it off for the rest of that conversation, so Pam never books that call. A caller describing immediate danger hears 9-1-1 first, with an offer to stay on the line while they dial. Otherwise Pam names Canada's crisis lines in order — 9-8-8, then BC's 310-6789 — and offers to text the numbers to their phone. You're alerted immediately, quiet hours or not. The conversation is flagged in your dashboard with the full transcript as your record. What it never does: assess risk, ask about plans or means, counsel, or promise the caller you'll phone back at a certain time. And you get a printable one-page protocol, generated from your own settings, to attach to your consent paperwork.
A written transcript — that's it. No audio of your clients is ever kept, and callers are told the call is transcribed at the top. Transcripts live in your dashboard on Canadian infrastructure, reviewable and deletable by you, on an append-only audit trail. Outbound texts are discreet by default: your practice name and a time, never the service. Nothing about your clients trains any AI model, and each practice's data is isolated from every other business at the database level.
The March 2025 guidance is effectively a procurement checklist, and we built to it: administrative AI only — it books and takes messages, it never touches clinical work; the assistant is never mistakable for the counsellor; callers can opt out to a human path without losing access; transcripts are disclosed, stored in Canada, and deletable; your data trains nothing. We describe our compliance by mechanism, never by certification — you'll never see a badge from us we can't back up line by line. Bring the checklist to your demo and we'll go through it item by item.
You do — your college holds you responsible for your records wherever they live, so the system treats them as yours from day one. Read and delete any conversation now, export your data whenever you like, and take it with you if you go. Two more pieces are rolling out for this vertical: retention you configure (transcripts deleted on your schedule) and written confirmation of data destruction at offboarding.
Yes, plainly — that's deliberate. Cost is one of the biggest reasons people hesitate to start therapy, and many callers are afraid to even ask. Pam states your session fee, explains that clients pay the practice and claim through extended health if they have it, and answers your cancellation policy plainly when a client asks. You set the numbers and the wording at setup; Pam just stops the topic being awkward.
No. Hard scope, enforced: it books, confirms, answers logistics, and takes messages. It doesn't give advice, doesn't assess, doesn't screen callers in or out, and if someone asks it something clinical it declines and offers to pass a message to you. In a crisis it does exactly one job — the right numbers, and you alerted — then stands down.
No — keep it. PamVA answers the phone your practice software doesn't. Busy times mirror with Google Calendar and Cal.com, plus read-only feeds from the calendar your existing system publishes, so Pam sees when you're booked and never double-books you. Run it as the after-hours and overflow line beside what you have, or as the single system for a solo practice that doesn't want two.
Text booking is $69 a month; the full Front Desk is $149 — flat, no per-minute meter, no overage bill. Against a session fee of $140–225, one caller a month who books instead of reaching voicemail pays for it several times over. Your dashboard shows exactly what the phone caught, so within a month you'll know from your own numbers, not our marketing.
Most practices are live within a day. We load your services, fees, hours, practitioners, intake questions, and crisis settings together — over a screen-share, or in person if you're between Armstrong and Kelowna — then you make test calls until you're comfortable, before a client ever hears it. 14-day free trial, no card.
The other AI receptionists pitching counselling practices are American companies — sold from a website, supported by a ticket queue. We're a Canadian company in Coldstream, BC. We set you up on a screen-share, or in person if you're between Armstrong and Kelowna, and answer the phone ourselves when you need us.
We're launching this vertical in the Okanagan and want ten local practices to prove it with. Founding practices get 50% off their first 6 months — Front Desk for $74.50 — free in-person setup, and a rate locked for life — in exchange for honest feedback and a say in what we build next for counselling.
Claim a founding spotHear it before your clients do. Book a demo tuned to a counselling practice — or call the live line and be the caller.