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I haven't answered my phone for anyone not in my VIP list in a year or two.

I can see when someone is calling and in realtime see them leaving a voicemail via speech-to-text and pick up the call if I want but 99.999% of the time it's spam.

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Th topic of this subthread is exactly that one cannot rely on the contact list method because doctors may call from any unknown number. Maybe you haven’t had to deal with that (yet), but once you do you’ll realize that your method doesn’t work for that.

Same with home repair contractors. The person coming over to do the work is unlikely to call from the same number the business hands out that rings an office manager or the owner. Same goes for the person calling me back with an estimate I requested.

For contractors, this is where SMS tends to come in a lot as they'll usually text if they cannot get a voice call through, which helps.

For doctors offices, it's a whole different bag and a true pain... you'll get voicemails with half a message that has none of the important details.

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