Missed Call Statistics

of calls to small businesses went unanswered: 37.8% reached a human, 37.8% hit voicemail, and 24.3% got no response at all.

411 Locals, 2016

A 30-day study of 85 small businesses across 58 industries, published January 2016. This is the true origin of the famous 62% figure that aggregator roundups misdate to 2023 or 2024. It is a small sample from an SEO vendor, so treat it as directional rather than definitive.

of inbound calls to trades businesses convert into booked jobs: plumbing 43%, electrical 41%, HVAC 38%, garage door and water treatment 31%.

ServiceTitan, 2022

Aggregated platform data from more than 3,000 US and Canadian trades businesses, June 2022. Booking rate here means the share of incoming calls converted to scheduled jobs.

of phone leads generated by digital marketing actually speak with a person.

Invoca, 2025

From Invoca's Buyer Conversion Benchmark Report, an analysis of more than 60 million phone calls across nine industries, released June 2025.

of consumers say they have abandoned a business entirely because a call went unanswered.

CallRail, 2025

Commissioned survey of 1,000 US consumers, published 2025.

say they will call a competitor if a business does not answer, and 21% call another business immediately.

CallRail, 2025

Same 1,000-consumer survey. The missed call is rarely a delayed call; it is usually a transferred customer.

of consumers leave a voicemail when a call goes unanswered, meaning roughly 58% do not. 24% switch to online chat instead.

CallRail, 2025

This is the citable, current replacement for the unverifiable claim that 80 to 85 percent of callers never leave voicemails. The verified number is less extreme but points the same direction.

of callers hang up after one to two minutes on hold, and only 18% will wait past five minutes.

CallRail, 2025

Same survey. Hold time behaves like a slow-motion missed call.

of 2,241 audited US companies never responded to a web lead at all. Only 37% responded within an hour, and the average response time was 42 hours.

Harvard Business Review, 2011

Oldroyd, McElheran, and Elkington audited real companies' responses to a test lead. Verified against the original article text.

higher odds of qualifying a lead when firms made contact within the first hour, and more than 60 times the odds compared with waiting 24 hours or longer.

Harvard Business Review, 2011

From a companion dataset of 1.25 million leads across 29 B2C and 13 B2B US companies.

drop in the odds of qualifying a lead when response time slips from 5 minutes to 30 minutes.

Lead Response Management Study, 2007

Professor James Oldroyd's study: three years of data, six companies, more than 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts. The original speed-to-lead research.

of homeowners say fast response and transparent pricing influence which pro they hire, 72% would pay up to 10% more for a pro with a better service reputation, and 53% are comfortable with AI handling the initial call or chat.

Housecall Pro, 2025

Home Service Customer Service Report, October 2025: a census-balanced SurveyMonkey Audience survey of 1,040 US homeowners screened as household decision-makers.

of customers expect a response within the hour, and 28% expect an immediate reply.

Jobber, 2026

2026 Home Service Trends Report, fielded December 2025. Response bands: 28% immediate, 28% within one hour, 15% within four hours, 25% within 24 hours.

of home services phone leads convert, the highest rate of the nine industries Invoca studied. The cross-industry average is 37%.

Invoca, 2025

From the same 60-million-call benchmark report. In the trades, a missed call is more likely than in any other studied industry to be a lost job.

is the average cost of hiring a plumber per job, with a typical range of $182 to $500 and hourly rates of $45 to $200.

HomeAdvisor, 2025

Based on more than 30,000 member-reported project costs.

is the average cost of an HVAC replacement, with a typical range of $5,000 to $12,500 and up to $22,000 with ductwork.

Angi, 2026

Angi cost-guide data, updated March 2026. One missed replacement inquiry can outweigh a year of answering coverage.

of consumers say the phone is their preferred way to communicate with a business, more than any other channel.

Invoca, 2021

Invoca consumer survey of 500 consumers. Small sample, but it is the publisher's own published research.

of mobile searchers click to call a business directly from search results, and about a third say they would be less likely to use or refer a brand with no call option.

Google and Ipsos, 2013

Ipsos survey of 3,000 mobile searchers who had recently purchased, commissioned by Google. Old, but a true Google primary source, so it is dated honestly here.

of consumers believe a business that answers after hours with an AI assistant offers superior service.

CallRail, 2025

Same 1,000-consumer survey as the caller-behavior section.

of jobs booked online come in after hours.

Jobber, via CallRail, 2026

Attributed to Jobber in CallRail's March 2026 home services roundup. We could not locate the original Jobber page, so this one is labeled as a secondary citation.

of conversations on the contractor lines OnCrew answers arrive outside weekday business hours: 16.5% on weekday evenings and early mornings, 16.9% on weekends.

OnCrew, 2026

Computed 2026-10-03 from OnCrew's call records: 910 inbound conversations of 12 seconds or longer over the 120 days to October 2, 2026, on the lines of the five contractors who have paid for OnCrew (HVAC, plumbing and roofing). Excluded: hang-ups before anyone spoke, OnCrew's own test and internal lines, calls from each company's own staff numbers, system calls and robocalls, and calls the line refused. Business hours mean 8 AM to 6 PM, Monday to Friday, in each company's local time. The earlier count, on 2026-09-19 (832 conversations, 90 days), read 29.6%.

of those conversations were classified as emergencies by the post-call analysis, the kind of call that pages an on-call technician instead of waiting for the morning.

OnCrew, 2026

Same 910-conversation set and window. Emergency means the receptionist's post-call analysis tagged the call urgency as emergency; routine covers everything else, including estimates, scheduling and questions. The 2026-09-19 count read 14.9%.

of conversations ended with the caller asking to be called back, rather than getting what they needed on the call.

OnCrew, 2026

Same set and window. A callback request is the post-call outcome where the caller asked for a return call; the rest were answered on the call. It is a floor for how many callers a business must ring back the same day. The 2026-09-19 count read 27.5%.

of conversations on the HVAC and plumbing shops' lines arrived outside weekday business hours, and 20.9% were emergencies.

OnCrew, 2026

Same method and window: 594 conversations on the two paying shops that run both HVAC and plumbing. Other trades are added once at least two paying lines per trade exist, so no single company's numbers are ever shown.

“80 to 85 percent of callers who reach voicemail do not leave a message”

Traces to a 2014 Forbes contributor piece promoting a call-center product, which says only that recent statistics show it, with zero attribution. Later variants credit Hiya, BIA/Kelsey, or RingCentral. No primary study exists.

Use instead: CallRail 2025: only 42% of consumers leave a voicemail, so roughly 58% do not.

“85% of people whose calls are not answered will not call back”

The most-cited origin is a vendor blog post that states the number with no source. Every other appearance cites that post or another aggregator. Folklore.

Use instead: CallRail 2025: 78% have abandoned a business over an unanswered call, and 82% say they will call a competitor.

“Missed calls cost small businesses $126,000 per year”

Vendor arithmetic layered on top of the 62% figure. There is no primary study behind the dollar amount.

Use instead: Run your own numbers: missed qualified calls times booking rate times average job value. Our calculator and benchmark below make the inputs explicit.

“Phone calls convert 10 to 15 times more than web leads (attributed to BIA/Kelsey)”

We pulled the actual BIA/Kelsey Call Commerce report from 2016. The claim is not in it. The report calls phone calls a valuable lead form with high lead values, and never states a 10x to 15x multiple. The multiple appears only in sponsored marketing decks.

Use instead: Invoca 2025: home services phone leads convert at 46% against a 37% cross-industry average.

“78% of customers buy from the company that responds first”

Commonly attributed to Lead Connect. The original is untraceable. Skip it.

Use instead: Harvard Business Review 2011: contacting a lead within the first hour makes qualification roughly seven times as likely.

“42 to 48 percent of home-service calls happen after hours”

Circulates only in uncited AI-answering vendor blogs. We found no primary study stating an after-hours call share for the trades.

Use instead: Jobber, via CallRail 2026: 41% of jobs booked online come in after hours (labeled secondary above).