free tool
How much are missed calls costing you?
Missed Call Cost Calculator for Service Businesses
Enter your own measured call volume, missed-call rate, booking rate, and job value. The calculator is a scenario model, not proof that every missed call would have converted or that all lost demand can be recovered.
How the calculation works
The formula is simple: average ticket value × close rate × missed calls per week × 52. The widget applies it with a per-trade default for ticket value and close rate, and every one of those defaults is a working assumption you should replace with your own number.
Ticket value. Use repair or first-visit averages rather than installed-job averages, because those are the calls that come in cold from search.
Close rate. This is the percentage of callers who, having actually reached a live person or an answering system that captures intent, go on to book the job. It varies by trade and season: emergency callers for HVAC often book faster than roofing storm-damage callers who collect several quotes. Use your own number: booked jobs divided by answered calls. Close rate is the multiplier with the most variance across operators.
Why the math is conservative. The formula uses single-job ticket value, not customer lifetime value. It also assumes 100% of recovered calls would close at the stated rate, which is a ceiling, not a guarantee. The "What this calculator cannot tell you" section below covers the full list of what the model misses.
Sources: the defaults are assumptions to replace with your own numbers. Published figures on missed calls, response times and receptionist wages are on our AI receptionist statistics page, each linked to its primary source. The widget code is open: inspect it at /widgets/missed-call-calculator.js.
Default results by trade, without JavaScript
If the calculator above has not loaded, or you only want a quick comparison, this table shows what it displays for each trade at its default of 8 missed calls a week. The numbers are the calculator's own defaults, checked against the widget on every build.
| Trade | Average ticket | Close rate | Per missed call | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC | $480 | 42% | $202 | $7.0K | $83.8K |
| Plumbing | $520 | 45% | $234 | $8.1K | $97.3K |
| Electrical | $560 | 40% | $224 | $7.8K | $93.1K |
| Roofing | $890 | 36% | $320 | $11.1K | $133.2K |
| Auto repair | $410 | 48% | $197 | $6.8K | $81.8K |
| Landscaping | $620 | 38% | $236 | $8.2K | $97.9K |
| Cleaning | $260 | 44% | $114 | $4.0K | $47.6K |
| Pest control | $340 | 41% | $139 | $4.8K | $57.9K |
| Locksmith | $290 | 52% | $151 | $5.2K | $62.7K |
| Garage door | $380 | 49% | $186 | $6.4K | $77.4K |
| Service business | $400 | 40% | $160 | $5.5K | $66.5K |
Is there a benchmark for missed-call rates?
Only an old, small one. In 2016, 411 Locals monitored 85 small businesses in 58 industries for 30 days: 37.8% of calls were answered by a person, 37.8% went to voicemail and 24.3% got no response. Widely shared tables of missed-call rates by trade could not be traced to a primary source, so measure your own rate from your call logs.
Peak season is the high-stakes window. As an illustration with made-up inputs, an HVAC operator missing 40% of 25 daily calls in July misses 10 calls a day. At a $500 average ticket and a 45% close rate, that is $2,250 in daily lost revenue, over $67,000 across a 30-day heat wave. The calculator makes this concrete for your specific numbers. See the guide to stopping missed calls for how to measure your own rate, or the AI receptionist overview and pricing page to see what closing that gap costs.
What this calculator cannot tell you
The model is intentionally conservative. Several dimensions of true cost are not captured in the formula, and it is worth understanding what you are not seeing.
- Customer lifetime value. The formula uses single-job ticket value. Repeat service, referrals and maintenance agreements can make a customer worth several times the first job, so a missed $500 repair call can cost far more than $500.
- Reputation cost. Unanswered calls can lead to reviews that say nobody picked up. The calculator does not model review damage or its effect on organic ranking, only direct conversion.
- Language. If some of your callers prefer Spanish and your phone process is English-only, those callers are effectively lost whoever picks up. The calculator does not model that gap, and VantaWeb does not offer Spanish-language calls.
- After-hours emergency premium pricing. Emergency service is often priced above a normal ticket. The calculator uses standard ticket defaults. If your business takes emergency calls, such as summer cooling failures or plumbing floods, the actual revenue per recovered after-hours call is higher than the widget shows.
Trade-specific questions
What is a good close rate for HVAC inbound calls?
There is no reliable public benchmark; we could not trace the commonly quoted HVAC ranges to a primary source. Take it from your own records: booked jobs divided by inbound calls that reached a person, over at least a month. Expect it to rise during peak heat or cold, when callers need someone today, and to fall off-peak, when they collect several quotes. See the HVAC AI receptionist page for trade-specific detail.
How many missed calls is normal for a small contractor?
There is no universal normal missed-call rate for a small contractor. Export calls from your phone system, separate business-hours and after-hours attempts, remove spam and repeat attempts, and calculate your own answered, abandoned, voicemail, and recovered-callback rates. Use that measured rate in the calculator and treat the result as a planning scenario.
What happens to the missed calls if I do not answer?
Some callers leave a voicemail and many do not, and calling them back often fails: in a 2024 TransUnion survey, 74% of US adults said they do not take calls from unknown numbers. In a 2016 study of 85 small businesses, 37.8% of calls went to voicemail and 24.3% got no response at all. That is why the calculator treats a missed call as lost by default; adjust your numbers if your call logs show you win many of them back.
Will an AI receptionist recover all missed calls?
Honestly, no. An AI receptionist can take calls that would otherwise reach voicemail after hours or ring out during peak overflow, but some calls still need a person: multi-party calls, callers who want a specific technician, and emergency dispatching that needs real-time judgment. The calculator models full recovery as a ceiling; expect real recovery to be lower, depending on your call mix. VantaWeb has no missed-call text-back, so a caller who hangs up before anyone picks up is not recovered by a message.
Put this on your own site (free)
Copy the two lines below into any page or blog post. The widget renders into the empty div, adapts to your site's light/dark mode, and links back to vantaweb.io. No tracking pixels, no cookies, no API key needed.
Use it wherever it helps your readers: your missed-call audit page, your "why answer fast matters" blog post, your service-trade tools page. We just ask that the "Powered by VantaWeb" footer line stays.
The actual fix
VantaWeb's AI receptionist Anna can answer inbound calls 24/7 and book appointments to your connected calendar, where booking is on. Your go-live date is confirmed during onboarding. Pricing is pay per use: voice is $0.41 a minute plus $45 a month for the receptionist number.