A growing share of the phones you dial answer on the lead's behalf. iPhone Call Screening, Google Call Screen and carrier screening services all pick up, play a recorded prompt, and ask who is calling.
To a dialer this looks like an answer. It is not a person.
🤔 Why it is its own outcome#
📼 Voicemail
A machine took a message. The lead may never hear it.
🛡️ Screened
The handset is asking who you are. The lead is often standing right there, deciding whether to pick up.
🧑 Person
A human answered and can talk.
Screening sits between the other two, which is exactly why it gets its own category. Counting it as voicemail hides a lead who is about to answer. Counting it as a connect inflates your rate with conversations that never happened.
🔬 How detection works#
AI Sync listens to the words, not just the rhythm of the audio. That distinction matters: a screening prompt sounds acoustically like a recorded greeting, so systems that judge cadence alone routinely call it an answering machine.
If screening is misread as a machine, the call is dropped and you lose a lead who was about to answer. If it is misread as a person, a rep is connected to a recording. Both are expensive, which is why this is detected on words.
🎙️ Set up your screening script#
When a handset screens your call, it asks who is calling. Whatever you record here is what the lead sees or hears before deciding.
Open the dialer settings
Find iPhone Script in the dialer's left-hand panel.
Pick or record an audio script
It must be a recording. A typed script cannot play down a phone line, and the dialer will stop you from starting with screening on until an audio one is selected.
Keep it short, human, and specific. A name and a reason beats a pitch.
Turn iPhone Screening on
The toggle sits beside Local Presence and Detect Voicemail.
Test it on your own phone
Dial yourself from a screened iPhone and listen to what plays. This is the only way to hear what your leads hear.
A good script sounds like a person leaving a doorstep message: "Hi, this is a real person calling. Please say your name and reason for your call and I will connect you right now." A script that sounds like an advert gets declined.
📊 Where screened calls appear#
Screened calls show up in two places on the Dialer Performance dashboard:
- As Screened in the outcome bar, so you can see what share of your list is screening you.
- As Handset screened it in Who actually picked up, beside machines and real people.
They are never counted as connects, and never counted toward your connect rate as successes.
A rising screened share is a signal about your caller ID, not your reps. See Caller ID and numbers.
🆕 What changed recently#
Screening
Screening detection was rebuilt. AI Sync listens to the words rather than the rhythm of the audio, because a screening prompt sounds acoustically like a recorded greeting and systems judging cadence alone mistake it for an answering machine.
A screened call is never counted as a conversation and never as voicemail.
See What's New for the full history.