1. A method of determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call comprising: A. placing, with an automated calling system, a telephone call to a location having a telephone number at which a target person is listed; B. upon said telephone call being answered, initiating a prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person; C. receiving a spoken response from an answering person; D. performing a speech recognition analysis on said spoken response to determine a status of said spoken response; and E. if said speech recognition analysis determines that said answering person is said target person, initiating a speech recognition application with said target person.