Free tool · for trade businesses
What are missed calls costing your shop?
A missed call costs a contractor the job that caller would have booked. With 60 calls a week, Invoca’s 2026 benchmark rates and a $450 ticket, that works out to about $3,501 a month. Put in your own phone log numbers below to see yours.
The formula
Six numbers multiplied together
monthly revenue at risk = calls per week × (52 ÷ 12) × lead share × unanswered rate × share who never call back × booking rate × average job value
The tool converts a week to a month with 52 ÷ 12, about 4.33 weeks. It only counts the first job from each lost caller. Repeat work, maintenance agreements and referrals from those customers would add to the number, so leaving them out keeps it conservative.
Worked example
A shop taking 60 calls a week
- 60 calls a week is 260 calls a month.
- 38% of those are job leads, and 35% of calls go unanswered, so 34.6 lead calls a month reach nobody.
- If half of those callers try the next company and never come back, 17.3 potential customers are gone.
- At a 45% booking rate, that is 7.8 jobs a month.
- At $450 a job, the shop has about $3,501 a month at risk, or $42,015 a year. At a 40% gross margin, $16,806 of that is profit.
Starting values
Where every default comes from
| Input | Default | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Calls per week | 60 | Exampleuse yours Pick a normal week from your own log. The size presets use 25 (solo), 60 (small crew), 150 (growing shop) and 300 (established), all Workahead example values. |
| Share of calls that are leads | 38% | SourceInvoca “38% of calls answered by a person are leads,” across nine home services categories including HVAC and plumbing. |
| Unanswered calls | 35% | SourceInvoca 65% of calls lasting more than 15 seconds are answered by a person, which leaves 35%. Across all calls, including hang-ups, only 52% reach a person. Service Direct’s 2019 sample found a similar 66% answer rate for in-house staff. |
| Never call back | 50% | Workahead estimate We could not find a primary study we trust for this figure, so it sits at the midpoint. Lower it if most callers are repeat customers. |
| Booking rate | 45% | SourceInvoca “45% of those leads convert on the call.” |
| Average job value | $450 | Exampleuse yours Varies widely by trade and job mix. Use your own. |
| Gross margin | 40% | Exampleuse yours Used only for the profit line. |
Your own numbers
Pull them from last month’s call log
Export last month’s call log from your phone system. Most business phone services list a status for each call: answered, missed or voicemail.
- Count every inbound call and divide by the number of weeks for calls per week.
- Count calls marked missed, voicemail or abandoned. Skip anything under 15 seconds. Divide by the total for your unanswered rate.
- For the booking rate, take the new-customer calls someone answered and see how many became a scheduled visit or a sent quote you won.
- For the average job value, divide last month’s revenue by the jobs you closed.
If your missed calls bunch up at lunch, after 5pm or on Saturdays, run the calculator twice: once for business hours, once for after hours. The two answers usually point to different fixes.
Questions
Before you trust the number
Is this the money I lost last month?
No. It is a scenario built from the rates you enter. Some missed callers were never going to book, some call back, and some were outside your service area. Use it to size the problem and decide whether fixing call coverage is worth an afternoon, a hire, or a service.
Where do the starting numbers come from?
Three defaults come from Invoca’s 2026 home services benchmark: 38% of answered calls are leads, 65% of calls longer than 15 seconds reach a person (so 35% do not), and 45% of leads book on the call. The share of missed callers who never come back is a Workahead estimate, and calls per week, ticket and margin are examples. Each one is labeled next to its field.
Why does the calculator apply the lead share to missed calls?
Nobody knows what an unanswered caller wanted, so the tool assumes missed calls contain the same mix of real job leads as answered ones. If most of your missed calls come after hours, when emergencies are more common, your real share may be higher.
How do I find my own unanswered rate?
Most business phone systems, Quo (formerly OpenPhone) and RingCentral among them, can export a month of calls with a status column. Count calls marked missed, voicemail or no answer and divide by all inbound calls. Leave out calls under about 15 seconds, which are often misdials.
What usually fixes this?
The common options are an answering service, call forwarding to whoever is free, a missed-call text that goes out right away, and a same-day callback list. Service Direct’s 2019 sample found answering services picked up 99% of calls against 66% for in-house staff. Workahead’s Trades Office Manager plan turns each missed call into a job request and a drafted text so the office can reply in one tap.
Do you store what I type?
No. The math runs in your browser. The numbers live only in the page address, so you can share or bookmark a scenario. Workahead’s analytics record that the calculator was used, never the numbers.
If the number is big
Turn missed calls into callbacks that go out in minutes.
Workahead sets up Claude Cowork so a missed call or voicemail becomes a job request with a reply already drafted. Your office approves it with one tap. Tell me about your phones and I’ll show you what it would catch.
Workahead is independent and not affiliated with Anthropic, Google, Invoca or BrightLocal. Results are planning estimates built from the numbers you enter, not measured results for your business.