Search for the cost of missed calls and you will find big round numbers: $62,000 a year, $126,000 a year. They make good headlines. They tell you very little about your business, because they are built on somebody else’s calls, jobs, and close rate.
Here is the math we use instead. It takes five numbers, and you already know all of them.
The formula
- Missed calls a week: calls that rang out or reached voicemail
- × the share that are new work: not spam, vendors, or current customers
- × the share you usually win: your own close rate on new phone enquiries
- × your average job: what a typical job bills
- × 52 weeks
The answer is what those missed calls put at stake in a year. It is revenue, not profit, and it is what is riding on the calls, not money anyone can promise to win back.
A worked example
Say a home service company misses five calls a week. Three are real jobs; the other two are a supplier and a spam call. The owner usually wins half of the new work that reaches them by phone, and the average job bills $600.
5 calls × 60% × 50% = 1.5 jobs a week. 1.5 jobs × $600 = $900 a week. $900 × 52 weeks = $46,800 a year.
Change any number and the answer moves with it. Miss two calls a week instead of five and it drops to $18,720. That is the point: it is your number, so it moves when your week does.
Three ways estimates get inflated
- Counting every missed call as a lost job. Many are spam, vendors, wrong numbers, or customers who will call again anyway.
- Borrowing someone else’s close rate. If you win a third of new enquiries, use a third.
- Weighing a plan against revenue instead of profit. A monthly service is paid from what is left after labor and materials, not from the full ticket.
Where to find your numbers
- Missed calls: your carrier’s call log or voicemail count for an ordinary week. Leave out callers you reached later and still won.
- Share that are new work: listen back to a week of voicemails and count the ones that were real jobs.
- Close rate and average job: your invoices or job management software.
What the number is for
The yearly figure is not a promise from anyone, including us. It is a way to weigh what an answering service costs against what voicemail may already be costing you.
Linevio answers the calls that would have gone unanswered, on the number you already have. Your virtual phone assistant, powered by AI, takes the details and connects callers to your team by your rules. Winning the work is still up to you.
Our missed call calculator runs this exact formula with your numbers, then shows how many completed jobs a month would cover a plan.