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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.

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🤔 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.

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🔬 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.

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🎙️ 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.
1

Open the dialer settings

Find iPhone Script in the dialer’s left-hand panel.
2

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.
3

Turn iPhone Screening on

The toggle sits beside Local Presence and Detect Voicemail.
4

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.

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📊 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.

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🆕 What changed recently

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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.

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➡️ Where to go next

How calls actually work

Every outcome in one place.

Caller ID and numbers

Why screening rises when your numbers get tired.