How much revenue are missed calls costing my business?
Multiply your monthly call volume by your miss rate to get missed calls. Multiply those by your close rate to get lost bookings, then by average job value to get lost revenue. At 500 calls a month, a 22% miss rate, a 35% close rate and a $580 job, that is 38.5 bookings and $22,330 a month.
What goes in, and what comes out
In: Inbound calls per month
In: Percentage of those calls that go unanswered
In: Close rate on answered enquiries
In: Average value of one job
In: Recapture rate: the share of missed calls an always-on answer actually converts
Out: Missed calls per month and per year
Out: Lost bookings per month
Out: Lost revenue per month and per year
Out: Recoverable revenue at the recapture rate you chose
Out: A shareable link that reproduces the exact model
The method, stated
This is a four-step arithmetic model of the numbers you entered. It calculates the revenue attached to calls that were never answered, on the assumption that an unanswered call converts at zero. It is not a measurement of your business and it is not a forecast.
The formulas, in evaluation order
missed_calls = monthly_calls x (miss_rate / 100)
lost_bookings = missed_calls x (close_rate / 100)
lost_revenue_monthly = lost_bookings x average_job_value
lost_revenue_annual = lost_revenue_monthly x 12
recoverable_monthly = lost_revenue_monthly x (recapture_rate / 100)
Every assumption this model bakes in
An unanswered call converts at zero. In reality some callers ring back or leave a voicemail you return; to the extent they do, this model overstates the loss, which is why the recapture-rate input exists as a discount you apply yourself.
Missed calls close at the same rate as answered calls. If your unanswered calls skew toward wrong numbers, suppliers and robocalls, they close lower and the model overstates the loss.
Average job value is a mean, not a median. One outlier job will pull a mean upward, so a median is usually the safer number to type in.
Every input is a monthly figure. Seasonal trades should run the model twice, once on a peak month and once on a trough month, rather than using an annual average.
The recapture rate defaults to 60% and is a scenario you are choosing, not a rate we have observed. Set it to 0% to see pure exposure with no recovery assumed.
No cost of serving the recovered work is deducted. Recoverable revenue is revenue, not margin.
What this model cannot tell you
It cannot tell you your real miss rate. That number lives in your phone system or call-tracking platform, and typing an estimate in produces an estimate out.
It cannot separate a missed call from a missed opportunity. A caller who reaches you on the second attempt was missed once and lost nothing.
It says nothing about margin, capacity or whether you could have serviced the extra bookings if you had won them.
It does not model after-hours versus in-hours misses separately, and those usually behave differently.
How does the missed-call revenue calculation actually work?
The calculation is deliberately boring, because a model you cannot follow in your head is a model you cannot argue with. Four numbers go in and one number comes out, and every step between them is visible on this page. Start with inbound calls per month. Multiply by your miss rate to get missed calls. Multiply those missed calls by the close rate you achieve on calls you do answer, which gives you the bookings you would have won if the phone had been picked up. Multiply that by the average value of one job, and you have the monthly revenue attached to calls nobody answered. The fifth input, recapture rate, is the honest part. It is not part of the loss calculation. It is a discount you apply on the way out, because no answering system, human or otherwise, converts every missed call. It ships at 60% because that is a conservative middle, and you should move it. Setting it to zero shows you raw exposure with nothing assumed about recovery at all.
Where does the $22,000 a month figure come from?
TrainYourAgent quotes a figure of roughly $22,000 a month in missed-call exposure for a busy home-services business. That figure is this model, at these inputs: 500 inbound calls a month, a 22% miss rate, a 35% close rate on answered calls, and a $580 average job value. Run it yourself. 500 x 0.22 = 110 missed calls. 110 x 0.35 = 38.5 lost bookings. 38.5 x $580 = $22,330 a month, or $267,960 a year. That is a worked example of the formula, not a client result and not an average of anything. It is published here so the figure stops being an assertion and becomes something you can reproduce, disagree with, or replace with your own numbers in about thirty seconds. If your miss rate is 8% rather than 22%, the same model returns $8,120 a month, and that is the correct answer for you.
Where do I find my real miss rate and close rate?
Estimating these two inputs is where most of the error lives, and both are usually already recorded somewhere you have access to. Miss rate: your VoIP or phone provider reports answered versus unanswered calls per period. Ask for the last full month, and ask for it split by hour of day if the system supports it. Most businesses discover their misses cluster into three windows: lunch, after close, and the fifteen minutes after a marketing send. Close rate: take the last ninety days of booked jobs that originated from a phone call, divide by the number of phone enquiries in the same period, and use that. If your CRM does not tag lead source, use a quarter you can reconstruct by hand rather than guessing across a year. Average job value: use the median invoice, not the mean, unless your job values are tightly clustered. A single large project will drag a mean far enough to make the whole model unusable.
Where do I find my real miss rate and close rate? — in detail
Phone system or call-tracking platform: answered versus missed, by hour
CRM or job-management software: enquiries in, jobs booked, by source
Accounting system: median invoice value for the last ninety days
Calendar: your actual opening hours, to separate after-hours from in-hours misses
Why do the vertical presets use different numbers?
The presets for HVAC, dental, legal, roofing and med spa are editable starting points, chosen to be plausible for the shape of each business. They are not survey data and not industry averages, and the tool labels them that way on screen. They differ because the businesses differ in structure. A roofing contractor has the highest miss rate on the list because the people who could answer are physically on a roof. A law firm has the lowest close rate because most callers are outside the practice area, but the highest single-matter value, so one miss costs more than a month of small tickets. A dental practice closes at a high rate because callers are usually booking a known appointment rather than shopping three quotes. The point of the presets is to save you typing and to show you how much the answer moves when structure changes. Overwrite every field with your own numbers before you take the output anywhere.
What should I do with the number once I have it?
Compare it to the cost of fixing it, and be careful to compare monthly to monthly. A model that says $22,330 a month of exposure is only interesting next to what an always-on answer costs to run, which is a different calculation with its own published method. The useful next step is usually smaller than buying anything. Pull the hour-by-hour miss report first. If 70% of your misses are after hours, an after-hours-only answering path solves most of the problem at a fraction of the cost of a full-time solution. If your misses are spread evenly through the working day, you have a staffing or routing problem that no software fixes on its own. If the number is large enough to act on, the two tools linked at the bottom of this page price the fix from opposite directions: what an AI receptionist genuinely costs per minute, and what a faster first response is worth at your volume.
Is a missed call really worth zero?
Not always. Some callers ring back, some leave a voicemail you return the same day. The model treats an unanswered call as worth zero because that is the clean upper bound, and then hands you a recapture-rate input to discount it. Set recapture to a low number if your callers are persistent.
What is a normal missed-call rate?
There is no figure we can publish honestly here, because miss rates vary enormously by trade, staffing model and hours. Pull your own from your phone system. It is a one-report request and it will be more accurate than any benchmark anyone quotes you.
Should I use mean or median job value?
Median, in almost every case. A mean is dragged upward by a small number of large jobs, and since the model multiplies job value by lost bookings, that distortion is carried straight into the headline number.
Does this include the cost of servicing the recovered work?
No. The output is revenue, not margin. If you want a margin view, multiply the recoverable figure by your gross margin percentage before you compare it to the cost of any solution.