What does a missed call cost a trades business?

A missed call doesn't show up on an invoice or a bank statement, which is what makes it easy to shrug off. But some of those calls would have been jobs, and a few a week add up over a year. Here's the maths, worked through with the example the calculator starts from for a plumbing business.

The example

This is what the calculator shows a plumbing business before anyone changes a number:

The calculator's example: 5 missed calls a week, a $450 average job, and 40% of those calls booking. That's about 104 jobs, or $46,800, a year.

Those are example numbers, chosen to show how the maths works. They aren't a statistic about plumbers, and they aren't a promise. Your own numbers will be different, and the calculator lets you put them in.

What goes into the maths

The calculator asks for three things, and multiplies.

• Calls you miss a week. The calls that rang out or went to voicemail. Multiplied by 52, that's the calls you miss in a year.
• How many would become a job. Of the calls you miss, the share that would have booked. Not every caller is a customer: some are sales calls, wrong numbers, or people getting a few quotes. Multiplying the year's missed calls by that share gives the jobs you missed.
• Your average job. What a typical job brings in. Multiplying the missed jobs by it gives what those jobs were worth in a year.

That's all there is to the money. It has no figure for how often callers try someone else, since nobody can know that for your business.

The calculator then sets the answer against the cost of answering those calls. It estimates the minutes those calls would use from an average call length, picks the cheapest plan whose minutes cover them (or the largest plan plus extra minutes, if none does), and tells you how many saved jobs would pay for it.

What the number is, and what it isn't

The number is useful, but it's worth knowing its limits.

• It's what the jobs bring in, not what you'd keep. Materials, fuel and your time come out of it.
• It isn't a promise. A caller who reaches your receptionist still decides whether to book. Answering the call is the start, not a guarantee.
• It counts each job once. A customer you keep may call you again next year, or pass your name to a neighbour. None of that is in the maths, because none of it can be counted in advance.

Why missed calls cluster

Missed calls aren't spread evenly through the week. They pile up at the times you can't pick up.

• On a job. You're under a sink, up a ladder or running a saw. You can't answer safely, and you shouldn't try.
• Between jobs. You're driving from one site to the next.
• After hours. A burst pipe doesn't wait for Monday morning, and a furnace never quits at a convenient time. Evenings and weekends may also be the only time a homeowner with a day job can call about the bathroom they want redone.
• In the busy season. The first cold snap for heating, spring for landscapers and pool installers, a storm for roofers: the phone rings most when you have the least time to answer it.

And a caller with a leak in the ceiling has no reason to wait for your callback. The next number on the list is a tap away.

Run your own numbers

The example is only a starting point. To find your own missed calls, look through your phone's call log for a week or two, and count the calls you didn't pick up. Then put that number, your average job and your best guess at how many would book into the calculator.

Every trade starts from its own example, and you can change any number in it. Try electricians' numbers, or the examples for heating and cooling, roofing and landscaping.

If you're a plumber, the plumbers' page shows how the receptionist handles your calls, burst pipes included. And if you want to compare the cost of answering with other ways of doing it, we've done that in what an AI receptionist costs in Canada.

Get started · from $99/mo →