What a Missed Call Costs a Trade Business, and What to Do About It

Service Direct measured how home-service businesses handle their phones. The owners guessed they answered 97% of calls. Measured, it was 66%. Source: Service Direct, Home Service Call Performance Report (blog.servicedirect.com/home-service-call-performance-report).

Nobody in that study was being lazy. Calls get missed when you're on a roof, in a crawlspace or driving, when the office is on the other line, at lunch, and after five when the homeowner finally has a minute. You don't notice most of them. A missed call from a number you don't know looks like spam, and nobody left a message.

Work it out with your own numbers, because they're the only ones that count. You need four: new-customer calls in a week, how many of those you miss, the share of callers who become jobs, and your average job.

Here's the sum with made-up round numbers. Twenty new-customer calls a week, five missed, one caller in three becomes a job, and the average job is $2,000. That's about twenty missed calls a month, six or seven jobs that went to someone else, and somewhere around $13,000 of work. Some of those people would have rung back, and some were never going to be jobs. Run it with your real figures before you decide it's small.

If you pay for Google Local Services Ads, add the ad cost. Google has said that from 1 October it bills missed Local Services calls as leads, so a call you didn't pick up costs you the lead fee as well. Source: Search Engine Roundtable (seroundtable.com/google-lsa-missed-subsequent-calls-41940.html).

Think about who's calling. A homeowner with water coming through the ceiling, an AC that died in August, or a quote they want before the weekend. They found you on Google in a list, with other companies right beside you.

When your phone goes to voicemail, leaving a message means waiting an unknown time for a call back. Tapping the next number might get a person right now. So they tap the next number. Whoever answers first gets to book the visit or give the price, and that's often the end of it. The caller had nothing against you. You just weren't the one who picked up.

Voicemail works for people who already know you. Your regulars will leave a message because they want you in particular. A stranger comparing three names has no reason to wait.

The most direct fix is a person on the phone. That could be someone in the office, a family member covering lunch, or an answering service that takes the details. Each one costs money and still leaves gaps: the office closes at five, and an answering service reads a script and can't quote.

It's worth looking at when you miss calls before you pay for anything. If it's mostly lunchtime and the hour after the office shuts, forwarding the line to whoever is free at those times might cover a lot of it.

When a call goes unanswered, a text goes to that number within a minute, from your business line. Something like: 'Hi, it's [your name] at [your company]. Sorry I missed you, I'm on a job. What do you need doing? I'll call you back as soon as I'm off.'

It works because it arrives while the caller is still holding the phone, before they've rung the next company. It answers the question voicemail leaves open, which is whether anyone is there at all. And if they text back with the details, you know what the job is before you return the call.

Keep it short, sign it with a real name and ask one question. Don't make the first message a link to a booking form. They called because they wanted a person.

There's a catch with text-back. US carriers require any business sending texts from an ordinary ten-digit number to register first. The system is called A2P 10DLC. It's registered in your business's name, on your number, and carriers filter or block business texts from numbers that haven't done it.

Registration can take a few weeks from start to finish. So anyone promising missed-call texts on the day you sign up either hasn't been through it or is texting from a number that isn't yours. That matters, because the number that texts your customers is the one they'll save, and it should belong to you.

The sensible order: start the registration the day you decide, and have missed calls reach you some other way until it clears, such as an email with the caller's number so you can ring them yourself.

It won't save many calls, but it's free and takes five minutes. Say who you are, that you're probably on a job, when you'll call back, and that they can text this number instead. That last part gives the caller something quicker than waiting.

Won't an automatic text annoy people? Not if it reads like you wrote it and it's about the call they just made. People get annoyed by marketing they didn't ask for. A reply to their own call is a different thing.

What about regulars and suppliers? A decent setup lets you exclude numbers you already know, so they don't get it.

Does it help after hours? That's when it helps most. A text at seven in the evening saying you'll call first thing gives the caller a reason not to spend the evening phoning round.

Do I need a new number? No. The registration is done on the number you already have, in your name.