What Are Missed Calls Costing You a Year?
You cannot answer the phone with your hands full, up a ladder or under a house. That is not a failing, it is the job. But the calls that ring out while you are working are jobs going to whoever picked up instead. Here is what that adds up to.
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Missed Job Calculator
Your numbers stay on your phone, nothing is sent to us.
All calls, not just new customers.
Include after hours, weekends and calls you cannot take on site.
Not suppliers, mates or existing customers.
First job only: repeat work is not counted.
First job only. Repeat work and referrals are not counted.
An estimate based on what you entered, not a quote or a promise of results. It counts the first job only and ignores repeat work and referrals, so for most trade businesses the real figure is higher.
What the Number Means
This is not a sales figure, it is an exposure figure. It shows how much of your work currently depends on you being free at the exact moment somebody rings.
One missed call a day is a lot of money
A single unanswered call each working day, at a typical job value, adds up to a serious number by the end of the year. Most tradies miss considerably more than one, particularly on the days they are busiest and least able to stop.
The first one to answer usually gets the job
Someone with a burst pipe or a dead hot water service rings down the list until a human answers. They are not comparing quotes, they are looking for whoever picks up. Being second is the same as not being called at all.
Missing calls is worst when work is busiest
When you are flat out you miss the most calls, which is exactly when the pipeline for next month is being decided. Then work goes quiet, and nobody connects the two because the missed calls left no trace anywhere.
How the Number Is Worked Out
Nothing hidden. Four steps you can check against your own phone and your own invoices.
Calls you miss each week
Your weekly call volume multiplied by the share that ring out. Your mobile keeps a missed call log, count a fortnight and double it.
How many were actual work
Strip out suppliers, mates, existing customers and wrong numbers, leaving only the calls that could have been a job.
How many you would have won
Multiply by the rate at which you win the jobs you do quote. This is the input worth checking against your own numbers.
Valued at your average job
Multiplied by your average job value. Repeat customers and referrals are deliberately left out, so the figure is conservative.
Where Tradies Lose the Most Calls
Four patterns that account for most missed work in Australian trade businesses.
On the tools, on a roof, under a house
The single biggest cause and the least fixable by effort. When your hands are full, gloved, or you are somewhere you physically cannot take a call, the phone rings out. Trying harder does not create a spare pair of hands.
- Most missed calls happen during the working day, not after hours
- Noise on site makes calls hard to take even when you can reach the phone
- Stopping mid-job to answer costs time and sometimes costs quality
- Voicemail rarely helps: most callers simply hang up and ring the next number
Early mornings and knock-off time
Customers ring before work, at lunch and after five, because that is when they are free. Those are exactly the times you are driving, on a job, or finally sitting down. High-intent calls arrive at precisely the worst moments.
- Before 8am and after 5pm are peak enquiry windows for most trades
- Driving between jobs means calls go unanswered for long stretches
- Calls after knock-off often get left until morning, by which time it is gone
- Weekend callers are usually urgent and usually ready to book immediately
Two people ringing at once
You can only take one call at a time. The second caller gets engaged or voicemail, and unlike a missed call from a quiet period, this one happened while you were already talking to a customer, so you never even knew it occurred.
- A second caller during an existing call is lost by definition
- You will not see these unless your carrier reports them
- Common during busy periods and after any advertising goes out
- This is the category tradies most consistently underestimate
The money you spent to make the phone ring
Vehicle signage, Google Ads, website, directory listings, sponsoring the local club, all of it is spent to make the phone ring. If a large share of those calls are not answered, you are paying for leads you never actually receive.
- Advertising keeps generating calls when you cannot answer them
- Your real cost per job is higher than your cost per lead suggests
- Improving answer rate is usually cheaper than more advertising
- Google reviews suffer too: people cannot review a call nobody took
Next Steps
Quote Follow-Up Value Calculator
Missed calls are one leak. Quotes going cold is the other, see what that costs.
Check your quotes →Tradie Lead Response Scorecard
Twelve questions that show exactly where your enquiries are leaking.
Score your setup →Missed Call Text Back for Tradies
The cheapest first fix: an automatic text to every call you cannot take.
See how it works →Frequently Asked Questions
Your phone already knows. Both iPhone and Android keep a missed call log, scroll back a fortnight, count them, and double it for a monthly figure. If you use a VoIP or virtual number for advertising, the provider will report answered versus unanswered directly. Whichever method you use, expect the number to be higher than you would have guessed. Almost every tradie who counts properly is surprised, particularly once weekend and after-hours calls are included.
For a sole operator or small crew where the phone is answered by whoever is free, twenty-five to forty per cent is common once after-hours calls are counted. That sounds high until you consider that any call arriving while you are on a roof, under a house, driving, or already on another call is likely to ring out. Businesses with a dedicated person answering, or with an answering service covering overflow, sit much lower. If you have never measured, twenty-five per cent is a reasonable starting assumption but your own count is far better.
Most do not, and this is consistent across service industries. Someone with an urgent problem is looking for a person to talk to, not a message service. They hang up and ring the next number on the search results. Voicemail works reasonably well for existing customers who know you and will wait, and poorly for new enquiries who have three other numbers to try. That is why missed new-customer calls cost so much more than the raw missed-call count suggests.
To keep the figure conservative and defensible. A new customer who has you back for maintenance, calls you for the next problem, and recommends you to a neighbour is worth far more than their first invoice, often several times more in trades with any repeat element. By valuing each missed opportunity at only its first job, the number understates the real loss for most trade businesses rather than inflating it, which makes it a safer basis for a decision.
It helps, but recovers far less than most tradies expect. For urgent work (a blocked drain, no hot water, a leak) the customer has almost always booked someone else by the time you call back, because they kept ringing until somebody answered. Callback also only works when you have a number, and a large share of missed callers never leave a message. It is worth doing, but it is a partial recovery rather than a fix.
No. Everything is worked out in your browser and nothing is transmitted to us or anyone else. Your figures are saved only in your own browser so the sliders stay put if you come back to it, and the reset button clears them. There is no sign-up, no email required and no follow-up unless you choose to get in touch.
Want to Stop Losing Them?
Tell us how many calls a week you get and how many you miss, and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing anything about it.