Advanced AI Call Screening - Big Impacts, Even Bigger Opportunities
- Sandy Tafur
- Jun 12
- 4 min read
Coming soon with ios26 - Apple's enhanced, AI Call Screening will certainly have an impact on high volume calling with Answering Machine Detection (AMD) and low/no intent calling. The upswing? It will also create amazing new opportunities in how we approach true, high-quality customer outreach.
Apple Press Release and Overview:
Demo of the new AI Call Screening in action:
In the outreach industry, we are already encountering lesser iterations of call screening, such as Live Voicemail, iOS and Android driven flagging and silenced calls, and private apps that consumers may pay monthly subscriptions to download that screen calls. Also, a similar feature to the upcoming ios26 call screener is already active on Google Pixel devices and other devices with "Google Assistant": (https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/pixel-call-assist-phone-screen/).
The point is that the impact of call screening is already being felt, if you aren't handling it today, you are behind the curve. But there is still time. With the introduction of the Apple Intelligence Call Screening feature, the reach of automated screening could explode by the end of this year to encompass more than 50% of U.S. mobile users. How can you prepare to adapt and leverage this new technology to maximize contact rates and success rates? Read on!
Things to be aware of:
Effectiveness of Answering Machine Detection continues to be shaken, and innovation will need to follow. Under no circumstances should ALL of your dials be placed with AMD. This was true before call screening, and is even more important in a world with AI Call Screening. Early lifecycle calls, high intent calls, high value calls, or critical informational calls should never risk AMD, which creates the possibility of a bad experience for the consumer, and the loss of an interaction for you. We'd expect that to increase exponentially as AMD's and other elements of automated dialer technologies, struggle to adapt to emerging tech like AI Call Screening.
We've held this AMD philosophy from day one... check a 2023 blog post from our founder https://www.outboundiq.com/post/answering-machine-detection-let-s-call-it-what-it-is
Multilingual campaigns. It is yet unclear if call screening text message will translate to phone owners' language. Make sure each agent is properly skilled to the language of consumers in each campaign before you place the call, or risk your message being lost.
Critical notifications. Important calls may get lost in the mix, and have trouble getting to customers, leading consumers to turn the call screener capabilities off. There is also chatter about impact of Apple Intelligence features on battery life, which have led customers to disable.
Inaccurate messaging risks. As a consumer, I've already seen missteps in AI interpretation of my SMS messages and speech to text voicemails. The tech isn't perfect, and you run the risk of sending a totally incorrect message if it is misinterpreted by the AI. Also, the actual name of your company or brand is very likely to be misconstrued in the text.
Opportunities:
Create optimal messages that increase pickup rate with your consumers! In the current landscape with pay-to-play Call Branding, you have a 15 character chance and maybe a logo to hopefully communicate why you are calling, at a high cost, typically per dial. Usually, all you are able to convey is your company name. Companies who have met consent standards have also experimented with costly pre-call SMS notification. Now - you get a full paragraph to communicate the reason for your call, practically FOR FREE (normal LD usage minutes), that appears to the recipient ahead of the call.
Have a special "call screener" Agent Script or Prompt that is clear, concise, and strategically designed for your audience at each stage of your prospect and customer journey. Focus on the reason for the call ("you requested information on...") and what your company does in your messaging. Practice, practice, practice and test your messaging's real translation in the AI screener environment. Measure the impact of agent intonation, accents, and so on. High Intent Callers and Engagement Organizations - you must take advantage of this critical opportunity to significantly increase your contact rates.
Also, if done well, informational callers can communicate everything in one shot.
AI outreach? Can you have an AI or recorded messages or agent selected prompts communicate the reason for the call to the AI Call Screener then switch to a human if your call is delivered? How does express written consent fit into the picture when robots are talking to other robots? There is an opportunity now to seek compliance guidance and / or legal council, document a defendable position, and prepare to leverage optimal technologies to ensure future efficiency of your operations.
Focus on ANI management now! Call Screening AI primarily negatively affects calls that are uncertain or deemed a risk or unwanted spam. If you have indeed been focused on keeping your phone numbers used for outreach (ANIs) clean and high performing before it's even more important to keep up with it now. If you haven't been protecting and nurturing your ANIs by using them optimally and operating with consumer-friendly calling practices, you are going to be more impacted by this.
The outboundIQ team works with our customers every day to ensure optimal calling practices and ANI management, both philosophically and through our automated technologies, outboundANI and Pulse. Reach out to our team if you'd like to learn how.
