The Missed-Call Math
Four numbers from your phone log, and what a missed call is costing you each month.
Most owners have never counted their missed calls. When they do, the number is worse than they expected, and it usually has been for years.
Missed calls are invisible by design. A call that rings out doesn't show up in your bookings, your invoices, or your reviews. It shows up nowhere, which is why nobody looks. The customer who got voicemail didn't leave a message. They called the next name on the list, and that company answered.
This worksheet turns that into a dollar figure. It takes about ten minutes, most of it spent finding your call log.
Four numbers
Pull one normal week from your phone system or carrier app. Not your best week, not your worst. If you can't get a log, count for one week starting tomorrow and come back.
What it adds up to
Or have it emailed to you, with a read on which fix fits your number.
Read the number as revenue, not profit. Your margin on those jobs is what you'd actually keep. Even so, it's usually enough to tell you whether this is a problem worth fixing or a rounding error worth ignoring. Both answers are useful.
What to do about it, ranked by cost
The right fix depends entirely on the size of the number. Start at the top of this list and stop at the first option that covers it.
- Do nothing. If the monthly figure is small next to what you'd spend fixing it, this is the right answer. Put a note in your calendar to re-run the worksheet in six months.
- Forward the line to a second phone. When you're on a roof or under a sink, someone else's phone rings. Costs nothing, takes ten minutes to set up with your carrier, and catches more calls than most owners expect.
- Fix voicemail. A greeting that says when you'll call back, and a habit of actually doing it within the hour, recovers a share of the callers who would have moved on. Not all of them. Some.
- A human answering service. A few hundred dollars a month for someone to pick up, take a name and number, and text it to you. The quality varies a lot; test one for a month before signing anything longer.
- An automated answering service. Cheaper than a human service and available at 8pm on a Sunday. It's good at capturing a name, a number, and the reason for the call. It's bad at accents, background noise, upset customers, and anything that requires knowing your actual schedule. Only worth it if the lead lands somewhere you'll see it.
- Hire someone. The most expensive option and, past a certain size, the right one. If the monthly loss is bigger than a part-time salary, you already know.
Option 5 is the one I get asked about most. If you are weighing it, the managed AI page explains what these systems are genuinely good at and where they fall over. And if your leads are arriving but going nowhere, the five accounts checklist is the faster thing to run first.
Email me my numbers and the fix I'd start with
Enter your email and I'll send the numbers you entered, the math behind them, and a one-paragraph read on which of the six options fits. No sequence, no follow-up campaign. One email.