To find out how many calls your business misses, count them for two weeks using your phone's call list or your provider's call log, and note the time of each one. General statistics about missed calls say nothing about your business. Your own count takes a few minutes a day and gives you a number you can act on.
Why your own number matters
You will find many figures online about how many business calls go unanswered. They come from other industries, other countries and other kinds of business, and it is often unclear how they were measured. A solo plumber and a dental practice with a front desk have nothing in common here.
Your own number answers real questions:
- Do I have a problem at all, or does it only feel that way?
- When do I miss calls: at lunch, on jobs, after closing?
- How many missed callers never try again?
- Is a paid solution worth its price for me?
Two weeks are a good length. One week can be unusual. Choose two normal weeks, not a holiday period.
Where to find the data
| Your phone setup | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Mobile phone | The call list in the phone app. Most phones have a filter for missed calls. |
| Landline with a router or phone system | The call list in the router or phone system, usually reached through a web page or app. |
| Internet telephony (VoIP) or cloud phone system | The online portal. Many offer a call log you can export as a file. |
| Phone provider | The customer portal or itemised bill. Note that some list only outgoing calls. |
| Several phones or staff | Each device separately, or the central phone system if you have one. |
Three things to watch:
- Busy calls. If you are on the phone and a second caller hears the busy tone, some systems do not record the call. Ask your provider if busy calls appear in the log.
- Voicemail. A call that goes to voicemail is still a missed call. Count it, and mark if a message was left.
- Deleted lists. Some phones keep only a limited number of entries. Write the count down every evening.
The two-week count
Use a sheet of paper or a simple spreadsheet. Each evening, go through the call list and fill in one line per missed call.
| Day | Time | Known number? | Voicemail left? | Called again? | Reached on call back? | What was it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | 12:40 | No | No | No | No | Unknown |
| Mon | 17:55 | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Existing customer, appointment |
The steps:
- Note the total number of incoming calls for the day, answered and missed.
- Enter each missed call with its time.
- Leave out calls that are clearly not customers, such as suppliers you know, sales calls and numbers reported as spam.
- Call back every unknown number once. Note if you reached the person and what they wanted.
- Mark if the caller rang again by themselves.
Step 4 does two things. It tells you what the missed calls were, and it may win back a few enquiries during the test.
How to read your numbers
After two weeks, add up four figures:
- Missed call share: missed calls divided by all incoming calls.
- Time pattern: how many were missed during work, at lunch, after closing and at weekends.
- Lost contacts: missed callers who did not leave a voicemail, did not call again, and could not be reached on call back.
- New enquiries among the missed calls: from your call backs, how many were possible new customers.
A worked example with invented numbers: you get 120 calls in two weeks and miss 30. Of those 30, 6 are suppliers or sales calls. Of the other 24, 10 leave a voicemail or call again, and you reach 6 more by calling back. That leaves 8 contacts you never spoke to. If your call backs show that about half of your missed callers were new enquiries, around 4 possible jobs were lost in two weeks.
Now put your own value on it. What is an average job worth to you, and how many enquiries usually turn into a job? Use your own experience, not a figure from the internet. The result is an estimate, not an exact sum, but it is your estimate.
What to do with the result
| What you see | Sensible step |
|---|---|
| Very few missed calls | Nothing to fix. Repeat the count once a year. |
| Missed mainly at lunch or at fixed times | Change who covers the phone, or state call times clearly on your website and voicemail. |
| Missed during jobs, callers do not leave voicemail | Text missed callers quickly, by hand or automatically. |
| Missed after closing | An after-hours text or an assistant that takes details and books appointments. |
| Many calls with the same simple questions | Put the answers on your website and in your voicemail greeting. |
Start with the free steps. A clear voicemail greeting, a fixed call back time each day and a short text sent by hand cost nothing. Ready-made wording is in missed call text templates you can copy.
If you text callers, remember that consent and opt-out rules for business texts differ by country, for example TCPA in the US, PECR in the UK, and UWG and GDPR in Germany. Keep it to one text about the call. This is general information, not legal advice.
If your count shows a steady stream of missed calls during work, automation can do the texting for you. Missed Call Text Back from Astranode is in early access: the caller gets a text in seconds and you get the details. Count again for two weeks after any change, so you can see if it made a difference.
Count your missed calls for two normal weeks, note the times, and call back every unknown number once. Decide on the next step from your own numbers, not from general statistics.