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Missed call cost calculator

What do missed calls cost your business? Count your calls for a week, then enter how many you miss and how many would have turned into jobs. Compare the lost profit with the monthly price of an answering service.

How to get honest numbers

1. For one normal week, keep a tally of every call: answered or missed. Your phone's call log helps.
2. Ring back or check voicemails for the missed ones and note how many were new customers rather than suppliers, existing customers or sales calls.
3. Note how many you couldn't reach again. Those are the ones that cost you work.
4. Use your own win rate on quotes and your real average job value.

The calculator multiplies weekly calls by 52 ÷ 12 to get a month, then works down from missed calls to lost jobs and lost profit. It uses profit, not revenue, to compare with a tool's price, because that's what a missed job actually costs you.

What to do with the answer

If the lost profit is small, a better voicemail greeting and a fixed time each day to ring back may be enough: see how to answer calls while on a job and how to make a voicemail greeting with AI. If it's large, compare missed-call text-back tools and AI receptionists for trades. Then test the tool against the same tally: the AI tool break-even calculator covers hours saved as well as jobs won.

Questions

How many calls do tradespeople miss?

We don't quote an average, because published figures usually come from companies selling answering services. Count your own for a week; it takes a few minutes a day.

Should I use revenue or profit?

Profit. A lost £450 job at a 30% margin costs you £135, so that's the figure to set against a monthly subscription.

Is an AI receptionist worth it?

Only if it saves more profit than it costs. Enter the tool's monthly price above to see how many jobs a month it needs to save. Most offer trials, so test it against your own tally.