Screening, forwarding and blocking are three different things
These get used interchangeably and they do opposite jobs. Getting them mixed up is why people end up with a setup that either interrupts them constantly or silently loses work.
| What it does | What it decides | What it costs you | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blocking | Refuses calls from a list of numbers | Nothing — the list decides in advance | Every unknown number is a coin toss, and new customers are always unknown numbers |
| Forwarding | Sends every call somewhere else | Nothing — all calls are treated identically | You are interrupted exactly as much, just at a different handset |
| Screening | Answers, works out who it is and what they want, then decides | Per call, on rules you set | Nothing, if the rules are yours and the judgement is good |
This is the distinction that matters when comparing services. A product that only redirects calls is doing forwarding, whatever the page calls it — our own forwarding page covers that separately, and it is a different job.
Screening is the only one of the three that makes a decision. That is the entire value, and it is also where these services differ from each other — not on voice quality, on judgement.
Four calls, four correct outcomes
Here is a normal Tuesday for a plumber. Four calls arrive between 4pm and 9pm while you are under somebody’s sink. A screening service earns its keep by getting all four right.
“There’s water coming through the kitchen ceiling.”
Interrupt. This one gets through to a human immediately, whatever the hour, because you wrote a rule that says active water damage always does.
“Can someone look at a dripping tap this week?”
Book it. No interruption — she checks availability, offers Thursday morning, confirms it and it appears in your calendar. You find out when you look.
“I’m calling about your business listing on Google.”
Ended politely. No message, no note, no interruption. You do not need a log of every SEO pitch that reached your line, and it never touches your phone.
“Do you install tankless water heaters?”
Answered. It is in your knowledge base because you said so during onboarding. If the answer is no, the caller gets an honest no rather than a callback that wastes both of you.
Only one of those four should have made your phone ring. A service that passes all four through has screened nothing; a service that blocks all four has lost you a job and an emergency.
The rules are yours, and specific
Generic screening rules are the reason most people give up on this. “Urgent” means something different to an electrician and a locksmith, and neither definition survives contact with a dropdown menu.
So we ask you during the onboarding call. It is a conversation, about twenty minutes, and this is one of the things it is for: what words in a caller’s first sentence mean drop everything. Which hours you accept an interruption and which you do not. Whether a landlord calling about a tenant’s heating counts. Who is on call at the weekend and whether that rotates. What you want done with a caller you do not serve — turned away honestly, or referred.
- Time-of-day rules. The same call can be a booking at 2pm and an interruption at 2am, and you decide which.
- Trade-specific triggers. Gas, no heat with an infant in the house, water near electrics, a locked-out tenant — your list, in your words.
- On-call rotation. Who gets reached tonight, and who is not to be woken under any circumstances.
- Out-of-scope work. An honest no on the call beats a callback three days later that ends the same way.
- Sales calls. Handled and dropped. Not logged, not summarised, not passed on.
Change any of it from the dashboard and the next call follows the new rule. No support ticket, no retraining period.
What screening does not mean
Two honest limits, because a screening service that oversells itself is worse than none — you stop checking.
First, screening is a judgement, and judgement is occasionally wrong. A caller who describes a genuine emergency in unusually calm language can read as routine. That is why every call leaves a recording, a transcript and a summary in your dashboard: you can see what was decided and why, and tighten the rule. A screening service you cannot audit is one you have to take on faith.
Second, screening does not mean fewer answered calls. Every call is answered — that is what makes the decision possible in the first place. What drops is the number that reach you. The caller’s experience is that somebody picked up and dealt with them; yours is that your phone stayed quiet unless it needed not to be.
Try to get past her
The honest test of a screening service is whether it can be fooled. Put your number in, she calls you back in about thirty seconds — then pitch her something. Try the “I’m calling about your Google listing” opener. Then call back and describe a gas smell, and see how differently that goes.
The trial runs 14 days or your first 30 genuine calls, whichever comes first. No card for the organic signup, and you can cancel from the dashboard.
What it costs
Screening is not a separate product or an add-on. It is how she handles every call, on both plans. Starter is $29 a month with 50 calls included; After-Hours Plus is $149 a month with 200 calls included. Calls past the allowance are $0.29 each, published up front, with notifications as you approach and pass the line.
Worth noting for screening specifically: the sales calls she ends still count as answered calls, because answering them is the work. At 58 cents a call on the Starter allowance ($29 ÷ 50), that is what it costs to never hear from another listing salesman on a work day.
Common questions
It answers every inbound call, works out who is calling and what they want, then decides what happens: put a genuine emergency through to a human, book routine work, answer a question, or end a sales call politely. The decision is made per call, on rules you set.
Forwarding sends every call somewhere else and decides nothing — you are interrupted exactly as often, just on a different handset. Screening answers the call first and then decides whether it should reach you at all. They are different jobs and it is worth checking which one a service is actually selling.
You define it during the onboarding call, in your own words — gas smell, no heat with an infant in the house, water near electrics, a locked-out tenant. You also set which hours accept an interruption and who is on call. Change any of it from the dashboard and the next call follows the new rule.
They are handled on the call and dropped. No message, no notification, no entry in a list for you to read later. They do count toward your monthly call allowance, because answering them is the work being done.
Yes. Every call leaves a recording, a transcript and a short summary in your dashboard, including the ones that never reached you. If a decision was wrong you can see exactly why and tighten the rule.
No — every call is answered, which is what makes the decision possible. What drops is the number of calls that reach you personally. From the caller's side, somebody picked up and dealt with them.