Screen My Calls Assessment
Decide whether a screen-my-calls workflow fits your situation. Answer 16 quick questions and get a clear next-step recommendation.
This assessment is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a clinical diagnostic tool. If you are experiencing significant distress, please consult a qualified mental health professional.
How Call Screening Works
Call screening is the practice of evaluating incoming calls before you answer them, so you can decide in advance whether to pick up, let it go to voicemail, or have someone (or something) answer on your behalf. For many people, the ringing phone itself is the trigger — the uncertainty of who is calling and what they want creates a spike of anxiety that feels out of proportion to the situation. Screening removes that uncertainty.
This assessment helps you identify which types of incoming calls cause the most stress and recommends a screening strategy tailored to your situation. You will answer questions about how you react to unknown numbers, callbacks, and urgent calls, and receive a clear recommendation for your next step.
- Identify your call anxiety triggers
Unknown numbers, missed call notifications, voicemails from unfamiliar callers — different people react to different triggers. The assessment pinpoints which incoming call scenarios cause you the most distress.
- Assess the severity of avoidance
There is a difference between preferring texts and actively dreading every ring. We measure how much your call avoidance affects daily life — missed appointments, delayed decisions, or social withdrawal.
- Get a personalized screening recommendation
Based on your answers, you will receive a strategy that fits your comfort level — from simple voicemail-first workflows to full AI-powered call screening that answers, transcribes, and summarizes calls for you.
Call Screening Strategies
Dedicated AI screening number
Give out a separate number that an AI assistant answers on your behalf. The AI greets callers, asks their reason for calling, and sends you a text summary. You decide whether to call back — on your own terms, when you are ready. This approach eliminates surprise calls entirely and is especially helpful for freelancers, small business owners, or anyone who shares their number with clients.
Call forwarding with smart rules
Set up conditional forwarding so calls from unknown numbers go to an AI assistant while calls from your trusted contacts ring through normally. Most smartphones support this natively, and services like KallyAI can handle the forwarded calls — answering, taking messages, and even making callbacks on your behalf if you need information from the caller.
Time-based screening
Define "open hours" when you are available for calls and route everything else to voicemail or an AI assistant. This works well for people whose anxiety spikes at unpredictable moments — knowing that calls outside your chosen window are handled automatically reduces the background dread of a phone that could ring at any time.
Contact-based priority tiers
Create priority levels for your contacts: immediate family rings through always, close friends during daytime only, and everyone else goes to screening. This lets you stay reachable for true emergencies while filtering out the calls that cause unnecessary stress — sales calls, unknown numbers, and low-priority follow-ups.