A rep can rehearse a discovery call a dozen times and still freeze the moment a front-desk assistant asks, "and what is this regarding?" That thirty-second exchange decides whether the real conversation happens at all, and until now, no roleplay covered it.
Why this matters
Plenty of cold calls, especially in fields like insurance, financial services, and enterprise sales, don't start with the decision-maker. They start with a receptionist, an assistant, or a screener whose job is to filter the call out.
Reps who are strong once they reach a buyer often lose the call before they get there, because the gatekeeper conversation requires a different skill: quick framing, persistence without pushiness, and knowing when to ask for a transfer versus a callback. That skill was never practiced directly, because roleplay agents only ever played the buyer.
How it works
Launched in v3.2 (February 2026), a gatekeeper can now be added to any voice roleplay agent. When creating or editing an agent, an admin sets the call type to voice and chooses a gatekeeper persona, for example a rushed operator, a helpful receptionist, or a professional secretary, each with a different difficulty level. A separate gatekeeper scorecard can be assigned, distinct from the main agent's scorecard, so the two phases are evaluated on different criteria.
The rep starts a single call. They first speak with the gatekeeper and have to navigate that screening conversation. If they succeed, the call transfers automatically to the actual decision-maker persona, and the main scorecard takes over from there. Optional background noise, an office, a cafe, a keyboard typing, can be applied specifically to the gatekeeper segment for added realism. After the call, managers can view gatekeeper and agent scorecards separately in conversation history, and track gatekeeper pass rates across a team over time.
The gatekeeper phase itself is graded against a fixed set of criteria: clarity, whether the rep clearly explained the reason for the call, persistence, whether they handled resistance without giving up or turning pushy, rapport, whether they stayed polite instead of sounding scripted, and outcome, whether they actually secured the transfer or meeting. That gives a manager a specific read on why a rep is or isn't getting through, rather than a single pass or fail.
Full configuration steps are in Create a gatekeeper to a roleplay.
What this unlocks
A sales manager can now tell, specifically, whether a rep's pipeline problem is happening at the front desk or in the actual pitch, because the two are scored independently instead of blended into one outcome. New hires can drill the gatekeeper conversation in isolation, dozens of times, before ever touching a live decision-maker call.
An SDR team gearing up for a call blitz can standardize gatekeeper handling across the whole roster beforehand, running every rep through the same rushed operator, helpful receptionist, and professional secretary personas so nobody walks into the campaign's first thirty seconds unpracticed.
Teams can also pair a gatekeeper persona with the discovery or cold-call bot they already use for a given vertical, so the screening conversation and the pitch that follows are both built around the same industry.
The bigger picture
The hardest thirty seconds of a cold call finally has a practice ground of its own.
See it in Action
Tell us what you're working on, whether that's sales calls, support tickets, or leadership coaching, and we'll show you how it fits.
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