Most small businesses measure the jobs they won. Almost nobody measures the ones that rang, got no answer, and called somebody else. Here is how to work out that number for your own business — and what it is worth doing about it.
The caller does not leave a message
This is the part owners get wrong. You look at your voicemail, see it empty, and think the phone was quiet.
Think about the last time you rang a trade. Your boiler was out, or your car would not start, or the shop was shut and you needed to know when it opened. Did you leave a voicemail and wait? Or did you hang up and ring the next name on the list?
Almost everyone rings the next name. Your customers do it too. An empty voicemail box is not proof of a quiet phone. It is proof that people who could not reach you went somewhere else.
Work out your own number
Four figures. You already know three of them, and your phone knows the fourth.
- Missed calls in a month. Open the recent-calls list on your phone and count the red ones from numbers you do not recognise. Not the ones you rang back. Just the ones nobody chased.
- How many of those were real work. Not everyone who rings is a customer. Some are sales calls, some are wrong numbers. Be honest — a quarter to a half is normal for most trades.
- How many you would have won. Of the real ones you did answer, roughly what share turn into a job? Use that same share.
- What an average job is worth to you. Not the invoice — what is left after materials.
Multiply the four together. That is roughly what a month of unanswered ringing costs you.
An example, using made-up but ordinary numbers
Say you are a plumber working on your own. These figures are an illustration, not research — put your own in.
- 40 missed calls last month
- Half were real enquiries → 20
- You close about 1 in 3 → about 7 jobs
- An average job leaves you $260
That is roughly $1,800 a month. Not lost to a competitor who was cheaper, or better, or had a nicer van. Lost because the phone rang while you were under a sink.
Even if you think that example is twice too generous, halve it. It is still more than most owners guess.
The three times it happens
Missed calls are not random. They cluster in three places, and each one needs a different fix.
You are on a job
Hands full, gloves on, noise everywhere. This is the biggest block for most trades, and it lands squarely in working hours — the same hours your competitor is sitting in a van with their phone on the dash.
You are already on the phone
The quiet killer. One call at a time means every second caller hears an engaged tone. It never shows up as a missed call on some systems at all.
It is out of hours
Evenings and weekends are when a lot of emergency work starts. A burst pipe on Saturday morning does not wait until Monday, and neither does the customer.
What you can actually do, cheapest first
- Divert to somebody. A partner, a spouse, a mate with a quiet job. Free, and it works — until it does not, because the person you diverted to gets tired of it.
- A human answering service. Real people, and good ones are very good. You pay per call or per minute, and the bill grows exactly when you are busiest.
- An AI answering service. Picks up every time, never sleeps, costs pennies a call. Most charge a monthly fee for each business or each number you put on it.
- Nothing. A real option, and the right one if your number came out small. Do the sum before you decide it did.
Being fair about what AI does badly
We build one of these, so take this in the spirit it is meant: an AI answering the phone is not the same as you answering the phone.
It will occasionally mishear a name. It cannot judge whether a job is worth your Saturday. It cannot tell that the caller sounds like your neighbour’s mother. And a caller who really wants a person will sometimes hang up on it — which is why it should say straight away that it is an assistant, and never pretend otherwise.
What it does well is narrow and useful: it makes sure nobody rings you and gets nothing. It finds out who called, what they need, and how urgent it sounds, and it puts that in a text message on your phone before the caller has finished dialling the next number. That is the whole job.
One thing to do today
Open your phone. Count the red numbers from the last thirty days. Whatever you decide afterwards, you will know something about your business that you did not know this morning.
Answello answers the calls you miss and texts you who rang and what they wanted. You buy it once and run it yourself, on as many brands and numbers as you own. See how it works.
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