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The Real Cost of a Missed Call for Plumbers, Electricians and HVAC Shops
When the owner is under a sink or up in an attic the phone rings out, and research on response times and call screening suggests the first shop to answer or write back has the best chance at the job.
At a glance
- A missed call, for a trade business, is a customer with a problem today who reached a voicemail greeting instead of a person, and most shops never count how many they get in a week.
- In an audit of 2,241 U.S. companies published in Harvard Business Review, 23% never answered a new inquiry at all, and firms that followed up within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to reach the decision maker as firms that waited even an hour longer.
- Calling back later is harder than it sounds, since eight in ten Americans say they generally don't answer when an unknown number calls, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 10,211 adults.
- For an illustrative three-truck shop that misses six new-customer calls a week, the first jobs alone come to about $38,000 a year, before counting the tune-ups, repeat work and referrals those customers would have brought.
Part 1 | The phone rings hardest when the crew is busiest
In a plumbing, electrical or HVAC company with one to five trucks, the person most likely to answer the phone is often the person holding the wrench, and the phone rings most on the days the crew has the least time for it, such as the first cold night of the season or the morning after a storm. A homeowner with water on the basement floor is rarely calling one company and waiting politely; they are working down a list of names from a search page or a neighbor's text.
The owner's usual answer runs through the head between jobs: If it's a real job, they'll leave a message. Some do, and the ones who hang up leave only a number in the call log that nobody checks until evening, by which time the work may have gone to another truck.
Part 2 | A reply within the hour reaches far more customers than a callback tomorrow
The best evidence on how quickly an inquiry goes cold comes from a Harvard Business Review study, in which researchers sent one web inquiry to each of 2,241 U.S. companies and timed the replies; 37% answered within an hour, 24% took more than a day and 23% never answered at all.
A companion analysis of 1.25 million sales leads found that firms which tried to reach a customer within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with the decision maker as firms that tried an hour later, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited a day or longer. Those companies had sales teams rather than service vans, so the exact ratios won't carry over to a furnace repair, though the direction is worth taking seriously.
The callback has a second problem, since in a 2020 Pew Research Center survey 80% of U.S. adults said they generally don't answer their cellphone when an unknown number calls; a short text sent within minutes, from the number the customer just dialed, gives them something they can answer while they keep calling around.
Part 3 | A missed-call routine a small shop can run from the truck
For most shops the fix is a short routine rather than a new hire, written on one card and taped inside the office door, so that every missed call gets a text within five minutes and a logged outcome by the end of the day.
- Route the call before it rings out. After three or four rings, forward calls to whoever is in the office, a family member covering the phone or an answering service, so a person is the first option and voicemail is the last.
- Send the missed-call text. "Hi, this is [Company] Plumbing & Heating. Sorry we missed you, we're on a job right now. Is this about no heat, no hot water, a burst pipe or something else? Reply here and we'll get you a time today or tomorrow."
- Make the greeting useful. The voicemail says what counts as an emergency, how to reach the on-call tech and when non-urgent calls get returned.
- Keep a callback log. Time of call, number, what they needed, when someone replied and whether it booked; a clipboard in the truck or a shared note on the phone is enough.
- Sweep at lunch and at five. Someone checks the log twice a day and calls or texts back anyone still open, starting with no-heat, no-water and no-power calls.
Keep the text about the job they called about; promotions and seasonal offers by text fall under consent rules covered in our missed-call text-back guide. General information, not legal advice; talk to a licensed professional about your situation.
| New-customer calls missed per week (Assumption) | 6 |
|---|---|
| Share who would have booked if reached (Assumption) | 30% |
| Average first ticket (Assumption) | $425 |
| Weeks working per year (Assumption) | 50 |
| First jobs lost per year (Calculated (6 × 30% × 50)) | 90 |
| First-job revenue given up (Calculated (90 × $425)) | $38,250 |
Illustrative example for a three-truck plumbing, electrical or HVAC shop; replace every assumption with your own numbers.
That figure counts only the first visit and leaves out the water heater, panel upgrade or spring tune-up the same customer might have booked later.
How you compare
- Response time: in the HBR audit, 37% of companies replied within an hour, so a shop that texts back every missed call within minutes is already ahead of most of the firms studied.
- Cash cushion: in JPMorgan Chase Institute data on 597,000 small businesses, the median construction business held 20 days of cash buffer against 27 for small businesses overall, so a few slow weeks reach the bank balance quickly.
- Your own baseline: count missed calls from the phone log for one ordinary week, then compare the count with the next week once the routine is running.
Questions to ask this week
How many calls went unanswered last week? The call log on the business phone already holds the number and the time of each call.
How many of those got a reply within the hour? A reply means a text or a call that reached the customer, not a voicemail left on their phone.
What happens to a call that comes in at 12:30 or at 5:15? Lunch and the end of the day are when a one-truck shop is least likely to pick up.
What is our average first ticket? Use the average of last quarter's first visits, not the biggest install of the year.
The first step costs nothing: pull last week's call log tonight, count the calls that went unanswered and multiply them through the table above with your own ticket size.
About this research: This article draws on a Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 U.S. companies and a companion analysis of 1.25 million sales leads, a 2020 Pew Research Center survey of 10,211 U.S. adults on answering unknown calls, and JPMorgan Chase Institute data on the cash balances of 597,000 small businesses. The response-time studies covered companies with sales teams, so the ratios show direction rather than exact odds for trade shops; the worked example is illustrative.
Sources
- Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K. and Elkington, D. The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. Harvard Business Review, March 2011. Audit of 2,241 U.S. companies; companion analysis of 1.25 million leads at 42 companies.
- Pew Research Center. Most Americans don't answer cellphone calls from unknown numbers. December 2020. 10,211 U.S. adults, surveyed July 13 to 19, 2020.
- Farrell, D. and Wheat, C. Cash is King: Flows, Balances, and Buffer Days; Evidence from 600,000 Small Businesses. JPMorgan Chase Institute, 2016. 597,000 small businesses.
Related reading: What Doing Nothing Really Costs a Small Service Business · The Systems Long-Running Home Service Businesses Have in Common · Why Answering Within an Hour Can Decide Who Gets the Job · Missed-Call Texts for Contractors on the Job · The Cost of Inaction (free live session)
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