What missed calls are costing you
Four numbers, all of them on your own phone bill and in your own books. No industry average required, and none offered.
- Four inputs, all yours
- No invented benchmarks
- No email required
The short answer
- The formula: monthly loss = missed calls per month × the share that were new customers × your close rate on those enquiries × your average job value.
- Every input comes from somewhere you already have. Your phone system reports missed calls, your books have average job value, and the middle two you can sample by hand in a week.
- The number this produces is an upper bound. Some callers ring back, and some ring three competitors and were never yours. Halving the result before you quote it to anyone is honest arithmetic.
The formula, not a widget
The formula
Monthly loss = A × B × C × D
- A, missed calls per month. From your phone system's own report. Count unanswered inbound calls, not voicemails, since most people do not leave one.
- B, the share that were new customers. Existing customers ringing about a booking are not lost revenue. Sample fifty missed numbers and check them against your customer list.
- C, your close rate on new enquiries. Of the new-customer calls you do answer, how many become a job? Your own number, from the last three months.
- D, average job or first-order value. From your books. Use the average, not the best one you remember.
A worked example
A contractor's figures. Substitute all four with your own; that is the entire point.
| Input | Where it came from | Value |
|---|---|---|
| A, missed calls per month | Phone system report, unanswered inbound | 60 |
| B, share that were new customers | Sampled 50 numbers against the customer list | 55% |
| C, close rate on answered new enquiries | Last quarter's booked jobs over enquiries | 35% |
| D, average job value | Books, twelve-month average | $480 |
| Upper bound | 60 × 0.55 × 0.35 × $480 | About $5,540 a month |
| Adjusted for callbacks | Halved, because some callers ring back | About $2,770 a month |
An illustration using one contractor's shape of numbers. There is no industry benchmark on this page because a number invented for you is worse than no number.
Before you spend anything on fixing it
Split the missed calls by hour and by day first. If most of them land inside office hours, the problem is staffing at lunchtime rather than an after-hours system, and those two have very different price tags.
Then check the callback rate for a fortnight. Ring twenty missed numbers back the same day and see how many had already booked elsewhere. That single exercise tells you more than the formula does, because it measures the thing the formula assumes.
What SalesCrew can and cannot do about this today
Cannot: answer the phone, text a missed caller back, or route a call after hours. Phone numbers, inbound routing, SMS and missed-call text-back are all on the roadmap and none of them work today.
Can: capture every web form and booking around the clock with the arrival time recorded, hold the contact record and the history, and place outbound calls through your own Vapi account with the outcome logged. If the calls you miss are followed by a form submission, that half is covered.
Get the four numbers before you get a quote
A sample of fifty missed numbers takes an afternoon and beats any benchmark.