Does a voicemail count as a connected call?

Under a strict definition it does not, because nobody answered and spoke. Under a looser one that bills every answered call, it does. Answering machines are the single largest source of disagreement between two counts of the same campaign, so the answer belongs in the contract rather than in a sales conversation. Ask for it in writing, separately from the headline rate.

Is a connect rate the same thing as an answer rate?

No. An answer rate counts every call where something picked up, including a machine. A connect rate counts the ones where a person answered and spoke. The two can differ by a wide margin on the same list, and they are routinely printed under the same heading, so check which event a published rate counted before comparing it with anything.

Why do vendors define the billing unit differently?

Because no standard makes them agree. Each vendor picks the event its own platform can measure reliably, and a platform that cannot tell a person from a recorded greeting will define the unit as an answered call. That is not necessarily sharp practice, but it does mean two quotes at the same headline rate can produce invoices that differ by half.

What connect rate should an Australian farm area expect?

We have not found one published. Every rate in this article was measured on a United States property list in 2011 or on cross industry business calling, and none of them is an Australian residential farm area. Whether an AI caller changes those rates is unmeasured as well. Measure your own out of your telephony records, and treat the published figures as brackets rather than as a benchmark.

Does the meter run while the phone is ringing?

On some per minute contracts it does, and it is the most expensive detail in one. Ringing time, answering machine time and hold time can each be billable depending on the platform. Across a campaign where seven dials in ten are never answered, billing the ring moves the total more than the rate does. Ask which of the three the meter runs on.

What is a connected call, and who counts it

JasonChecked by ListingLine research desk27 August 202612 min read

The short answer

A connected call is a dial where a person answers and speaks to the caller. A dial is only an attempt, and an answered call may be an answering machine. No Australian standard defines a connected call, so the vendor billing you draws the line, and where it falls moves the invoice.

What to take away

A connected call is a dial where a person answers and speaks. A dial is an attempt, an answered call may be a machine, and a conversation is a connected call that got past the opener.
No Australian standard defines the unit, so the definition is a contract term rather than a measurement. Get it in writing before the first campaign, including what happens when an answering machine picks up.
Published connect rates are not comparable. Gong Labs measured 5.4 per cent of cold dials connecting across more than 300 million calls in July 2024. Baylor University measured 28 per cent of real estate cold calls answered in November 2011.
Count your own connected calls out of your telephony records before you buy anything priced on them. Your answer rate varies more between agencies than any benchmark a vendor will quote you.

What is a connected call?

A dial where a person answers and speaks. Everything else on the ladder from an attempt to a conversation is a different event, and the gap between two of those events is what an invoice is built on.

A connected call is a dial where a person answers and speaks to the caller. Four events sit around it and none of them is the same thing. A dial is an attempt, placed whether anybody is home or not. A ring is a dial that reached a working number. An answered call is one where something picked up, which includes an answering machine. A conversation is a connected call that got past the opening line. No Australian standard we could find defines any of these events, so the vendor writing your invoice decides which one triggers a charge, and that decision is worth more to your bill than the headline rate printed beside it.

Event	What creates it	What it does not include	Who counts it
Dial	An attempt placed by the dialler	Any evidence a human exists	Your telephony records
Ring	A dial that reached a working number	Anybody picking up	Your telephony records
Answered call	Something picks up the line	Proof it was a person	Your telephony records
Connected call	A person answers and speaks	Machines, screening services, silent pickups	The vendor, on its own definition
Conversation	A connected call that gets past the opener	Calls that end in the first seconds	Whoever reads the transcripts

The five events between an attempt and a conversation, what creates each one, and what it does not include. Source: ListingLine desk definitions, August 2026. No Australian standard defines these terms, so this table is our own reading of how they are used in market rather than a quotation of a published definition.

5.4 per cent

of cold dials reached a prospect who answered, across more than 300 million calls analysed by Gong Labs in July 2024. Baylor University, studying real estate cold calls in November 2011, reported 28 per cent of calls answered. The two figures count different events in different markets and are not interchangeable.

Gong Labs, more than 300 million cold calls, July 2024, and Keller Center for Research at Baylor University, calls placed November 2011

That gap is the whole article. One number counts a prospect answering a business phone. The other counts a residential line answering at all. Neither was measured on Australian residential property, neither publishes what happened to the answering machines, and a vendor may quote you either one and call it a connect rate.

Where do vendors draw the line, and why does it move the bill?

At one of four places, and the further down the list it falls the fewer events you pay for. The choice is made in a contract rather than by a standards body, and it is usually one sentence long. Ask for that sentence before the first campaign runs, not after the first invoice.

Definition used for billing	Billed events per 1,000 dials	Where the number comes from
Every dial placed	1,000	Measured by your own dialler
Every call that was answered	280	Modelled, not measured, on Baylor at 28 per cent answered
A person answers	Fewer than 280, not published	Baylor does not split answering machines out of the 28 per cent
A person answers and speaks	54 on Gong's average rate, 133 on its top quartile rate	Modelled, not measured, on Gong at 5.4 and 13.3 per cent, cross industry
A person answers and the call runs past a minimum duration	Below the row above, by an amount only the vendor knows	Set by a threshold we could not find published anywhere

What four possible definitions of a connected call would bill on the same 1,000 dials. Source of the 28 per cent answered rate: Keller Center for Research at Baylor University, calls placed November 2011. Source of the 5.4 and 13.3 per cent connect rates: Gong Labs, more than 300 million cold calls, July 2024. Every count below is modelled, not measured, and the two rates come from different markets.

Connected calls counted from 1,000 dials, under three published rates

Answered, real estate cold list

Baylor at 28 per cent, November 2011

280

Connected, top quartile rep

Gong at 13.3 per cent, July 2024

133

Connected, average rep

Gong at 5.4 per cent, July 2024

Hatched means modelled, not measured

Australian agencies are quoted connect rates drawn from all three of these datasets. Every bar is hatched because every bar is modelled, not measured: the rates are published, the counts are our arithmetic on 1,000 dials, and none of the three was measured on Australian residential property. Sources: Keller Center for Research at Baylor University, calls placed November 2011, and Gong Labs, more than 300 million cold calls, July 2024.

The 1,000 dials themselves are off the chart on purpose. Drawn to scale they would flatten the other bars into slivers, and the shape worth seeing is the spread between 280, 133 and 54 on the same thousand attempts. At A$2.00 a connected call, that spread is A$560 against A$108 for identical work.

Why do published connect rates disagree so much?

Because they count different events, in different markets, against different denominators. Gong Labs divides calls answered by a prospect by total dials. Baylor University's real estate study counted whether a residential line was answered at all. Cognism reports the dials needed to reach a prospect. Three metrics, one word.

Dataset	What it counted	Population	Figure
Baylor University, November 2011	Whether the call was answered	6,264 cold calls placed by 50 real estate agents in the United States	28 per cent answered
Gong Labs, July 2024	Calls answered by a prospect, divided by total dials	More than 300 million cross industry business cold calls	5.4 per cent average, 13.3 per cent top quartile
Cognism, 2026 report	Dials needed on average to reach a prospect	More than 200,000 business cold calls	1.55 dials, which implies about 65 per cent

Three published cold calling datasets that are routinely quoted as connect rates, and what each one actually counted. Sources: Keller Center for Research at Baylor University, calls placed November 2011; Gong Labs, more than 300 million cold calls, July 2024; Cognism, State of Cold Calling 2026, more than 200,000 calls analysed. The implied percentage in the last row is our own arithmetic and is modelled, not measured.

Read the last two rows together. Gong says an average rep speaks to a prospect on about one dial in nineteen. Cognism says it takes 1.55 dials to reach one. Both are business calling in the same era, and they differ by more than a factor of ten, because neither publishes a definition tight enough to reconcile them.

That is why our own arithmetic elsewhere carries a warning. What an AI voice agent really costs per call puts 3.4 connected calls behind one appraisal, using Baylor's 28 per cent answered rate as though it were a connect rate. If the true connect rate is lower, the real count sits below 3.4 and the cost per appraisal sits below the A$6.80 printed there. The figure errs against us, which is the right direction for a number we publish about our own price.

What does a connected call sound like at the boundary?

Three calls, placed to the same street on the same morning. One is never a connected call. One is answered and still is not. One is. The words are what separates them, and no dashboard can tell you which of the three you paid for without them.

Three calls, one of which is a connected call

Vale Property is an invented agency, as in every script we publish. These lines are written to mark the boundary rather than transcribed from a real call.

Machine: Hi, you have reached the Nguyen family. Leave a message after the tone.
Caller: No message. Ends the call.
Desk note: Answered by something. Not a person, so not a connected call. On a per minute contract you may still have been billed for the seconds.
Homeowner: Hello?
Caller: Morning, it is Sam calling from Vale Property about
Homeowner: Not interested. Hangs up.
Desk note: A person answered and spoke two words. On most definitions in market that is a connected call and you pay for it. Under a definition with a duration floor it is not.
Homeowner: Hello?
Caller: Morning, it is Sam from Vale Property. I am calling about the house that sold on your street last week.
Homeowner: Oh yes, the one on the corner. What did that go for?
Desk note: Answered, spoken to, and past the opener. A connected call on any definition, and the only one of the three that is also a conversation.

The middle call is where the money sits. A two word hangup is a connected call under most definitions in the market, and there is nothing dishonest about that, as long as the contract says so before the campaign starts rather than after the invoice arrives.

How do you count your own connected calls?

Out of your telephony records, before you sign anything priced on them. Five steps, none of which needs the vendor's cooperation, and the output is the one number every quote in front of you depends on.

Counting connected calls out of your own records

Pull the last thousand outbound dials
Take them from your telephony provider rather than your CRM, because a CRM records what somebody logged and a switch records what happened. A thousand dials is enough to hold the rate steady and small enough to check by hand.
Split answered from rang out
Most switches record a disposition per call. Count the dials that ended in an answer, then set the rang out, engaged and non working numbers aside. On Baylor's real estate figures those three swallowed 72 per cent of calls, so expect most of your thousand to land here.
Take the answering machines out
This is the step everybody skips and it is the one that moves the number. Sort the answered calls by duration, listen to a sample of the short ones, and count how many were a recorded greeting. What is left is your connected calls on the strict definition.
Set a duration floor and write it down
Decide how long a connected call has to last to count, record the number, and apply it consistently. Anything under about ten seconds is a pickup and a hangup. The threshold itself matters less than the fact that it never moves between the vendor's report and yours.
Reconcile against the vendor's count every month
Put your count and theirs side by side in the first month and every month after. A gap of a few per cent is definitional noise. A gap of a third is a different definition, and it is far easier to settle in month one than in an argument about an invoice.

Then take your own rate into the arithmetic. How many calls it takes to win one listing sets out the dials behind an appraisal on Ray White's published phone days, and your answer rate is what turns those dials into the connected calls a vendor will bill you for.

What should the contract say?

One sentence defining the billed event, and four more closing the gaps around it. None of this is unusual to ask for, and a vendor who will not put the definition in writing has answered a different question.

The event that triggers a charge, written as a sentence rather than a word. A dial, a ring, an answered call, a connected call, or a minute of speech.
What happens when an answering machine picks up, stated separately, because it is the single largest source of disagreement between two counts of the same campaign.
The minimum duration, if there is one, and whether the meter starts at the answer or at the dial.
Whose records govern when the two counts differ, and how a disputed month gets settled.
Whether the definition can change during the term, and what notice you get if it does.

None of this touches whether the call should have been placed at all. Washing, permitted hours and identification attach to the dial rather than to the connection, so they apply to all thousand attempts and not only to the ones you pay for. Our read of those obligations sits in the compliance overview, and nothing here is legal advice.

Common questions

Does a voicemail count as a connected call?: Under a strict definition it does not, because nobody answered and spoke. Under a looser one that bills every answered call, it does. Answering machines are the single largest source of disagreement between two counts of the same campaign, so the answer belongs in the contract rather than in a sales conversation. Ask for it in writing, separately from the headline rate.
Is a connect rate the same thing as an answer rate?: No. An answer rate counts every call where something picked up, including a machine. A connect rate counts the ones where a person answered and spoke. The two can differ by a wide margin on the same list, and they are routinely printed under the same heading, so check which event a published rate counted before comparing it with anything.
Why do vendors define the billing unit differently?: Because no standard makes them agree. Each vendor picks the event its own platform can measure reliably, and a platform that cannot tell a person from a recorded greeting will define the unit as an answered call. That is not necessarily sharp practice, but it does mean two quotes at the same headline rate can produce invoices that differ by half.
What connect rate should an Australian farm area expect?: We have not found one published. Every rate in this article was measured on a United States property list in 2011 or on cross industry business calling, and none of them is an Australian residential farm area. Whether an AI caller changes those rates is unmeasured as well. Measure your own out of your telephony records, and treat the published figures as brackets rather than as a benchmark.
Does the meter run while the phone is ringing?: On some per minute contracts it does, and it is the most expensive detail in one. Ringing time, answering machine time and hold time can each be billable depending on the platform. Across a campaign where seven dials in ten are never answered, billing the ring moves the total more than the rate does. Ask which of the three the meter runs on.

Sources

1The hidden power of cold calling: insights from 300M calls. Gong Labs, Published 18 July 2024, dataset of more than 300 million calls.
2Has Cold Calling Gone Cold?. Keller Center for Research, Baylor University, Calls placed November 2011, published September 2012.
3The State of Cold Calling 2026. Cognism, more than 200,000 calls analysed, Report published 2026.
4Ray White network books 12,000 appraisals in 12 hour phone blitz. Elite Agent, Event 26 February 2026.

Written by

Jason

Founder, ListingLine

Builds the AI voice agent that ListingLine customers point at their farm area. Spends most of his week reading call transcripts, which is an unusual and fairly grim way to learn what Australian homeowners will and will not talk about on the phone.