Every number on every dashboard comes from one path through the system. If you know the path, you know what each figure is counting — and, just as important, what it is not counting.
This page is the shared vocabulary for the whole product. The Dialer Performance dashboard, the reports, and your AI agent all use the definitions below. When a number looks wrong, start here.
🗺️ The path of one dial#
Only the green box is a conversation. Everything else answered in some sense, which is exactly why "answered" and "connected" are different words here.
Answered, no rep is the one to watch. A real person picked up and reached nobody. Regulators call this an abandoned call, and the limit is 3% of live human answers. Our engine stops itself well before that — see Predictive pacing.
📖 What each outcome means#
✅ Connected — a rep and a lead talked
A person answered and reached one of your reps. This is the only outcome that can become a sale.
Counted when: a human answered, the call bridged to a rep, and there was real audio. A machine verdict, a voicemail verdict, or a screening verdict can never be counted here, no matter how long the call lasted.
⚠️ Answered, no rep
Somebody picked up the phone and never got a human. Usually every rep was already talking when the call landed.
What to do: lower your lines per rep, or put more reps on the floor. This is the number the pacing engine exists to hold down.
📼 Voicemail
An answering machine picked up. The system detects this by listening to the greeting, then stops the call from reaching a rep.
Why it matters: a voicemail is a dial that cost you money and reached nobody. It is counted in your dials, never in your connects.
🛡️ Screened
The lead's phone answered on their behalf — iPhone Call Screening, Google Call Screen, or a carrier screening service. A recorded voice asks who is calling.
Why it is its own category: a screened call is not a machine and not a person. The lead may well call you back. Merging it into "voicemail" hides that, and counting it as a connect inflates your rate with conversations that never happened. See iPhone screening.
📵 No answer
It rang out. Nobody home.
🙅 Declined
They saw the call and actively rejected it. This is a signal about your list or your caller ID, not a missed opportunity.
🔙 Rep hung up first
Your side cancelled before the lead could answer. Almost always pacing: too many lines for the reps available.
☎️ Bad number
The number does not exist. You are paying to dial it every time it comes round in the list. Worth cleaning.
📡 Carrier problem
The call failed on the network. Watch the trend, not the individual call.
🧮 The formulas, in plain words#
| Metric | How it is worked out | Common misreading |
|---|---|---|
| Dials | Every outbound call placed, including ones that hit voicemail. | People expect voicemails to be excluded. They are dials — they cost money. |
| Connects | Dials where a person answered and reached a rep. | Not "answered". A voicemail is answered and is not a connect. |
| Connect rate | Connects ÷ dials. | If this seems low, check your Screened and Voicemail counts before blaming reps. |
| Avg talk time | Averaged over every conversation, short ones included. | A 30-second floor makes this look far higher than reality. We do not use one. |
| Answered, no rep | A human answered, no rep took it. | This is your abandonment number. Watch it. |
One reconciliation rule. On the dashboard, the outcome breakdown always adds up to your dial count exactly. If the bars sum to a different number than the tile above them, something is wrong — tell your agent, or see Troubleshooting.
🌍 Time zones change your numbers#
Every figure is bucketed by your day, not the server's. "Today" means today where you are.
Set your time zone once
Open your profile in the top right, choose your time zone, and save. See Profile settings.
Check the dashboard header
The Dialer Performance header shows the time zone the numbers are using. If it does not match where your reps sit, the day boundaries will be wrong.
If your time zone is wrong, an evening call can land on the next day's report. The numbers are still correct — they are just filed under a day you did not expect.
🆕 What changed recently#
Definitions
These definitions are now enforced everywhere. The dashboard, the reports and any AI agent connected to your account all use the same rules, so two screens can no longer disagree about what a connection is.
Phone screening became its own outcome, separate from voicemail and from a real conversation.
See What's New for the full history.