Articles about missed calls love big statistics, and most of them fall apart if you ask where the number came from. So ignore all of them. The only missed-call figure worth knowing is your own, and you can work it out with three numbers you already have in your head, roughly is fine.
Number one: what is an average job, booking or case worth to you, in pounds, once it is completed? Number two: of every ten enquiries your business receives, how many become paying work? Number three: how many calls a week ring out, arrive after closing, or hit voicemail while the team is busy? Be honest on the third one; most owners underestimate it until they actually count for a week.
Now the arithmetic. If ten missed calls a week would have produced, at your normal close rate, two jobs, and your average job is worth a few hundred pounds, then the phone is quietly leaking a four-figure sum most months. Your figures will differ, and that is the point: the answer is either small enough to ignore or large enough to fix, and either way it is now a decision instead of a feeling.
We built a free calculator on this website that does exactly this sum with your own numbers, nothing pre-filled and nothing exaggerated. Two minutes with it will tell you more than any industry report, because it is your business on the page.
And if the number surprises you, the remedy is boringly practical: make sure every call gets answered by something competent in the first minute, at any hour, and every enquiry is captured completely. Whether that is our system or someone else's matters less than the gap being closed; our demos are open if you want to see one way it can work.