You can't answer and work at the same time, so a share of your calls will always ring out. The question is what happens to them. Here is what the numbers say, why the customer doesn't ring back, and what you can do about it, including the option that costs nothing.
Fifteen minutes on Teams, with a real person.
In a Fix Radio survey of over 220 UK tradespeople, 34% said they had lost work because they didn't answer the phone. That's the ones who knew. The ones who didn't know are the customer who rang, got voicemail, and rang the next name on the list without leaving a message. Moneypenny's research, as reported, puts the share of callers who reach a voicemail and never ring back at up to 85%.
Those two figures are the whole problem. A tradesman's calls come while he's working, which is most of the day, and a customer with a problem is not patient. The call you miss at ten is booked with someone else by eleven, and you'll never know it rang.
What a missed call costs depends on your trade. A plumber's emergency call-out is worth a day's money; a builder's enquiry might be a twelve-week job; a decorator's is a four-room house. Put your own numbers in rather than take anyone's: the jobs you do, what they're worth, and the share of your calls that ring out while you're working.
Costs nothing and loses the most. You can't answer under a sink, and the customer who gets voicemail is gone. Ringing back at six is ringing someone who booked at two.
A human answering service or a family member with the phone. Better than voicemail, and a message is still a job unbooked. The customer waits for your callback or doesn't; usually doesn't.
Answers in your name, works out the job, books it into the hours you've opened and texts the customer. The job is booked before you've looked at your phone. Adminmate's comes with Solo and Team, from £99 a month.
Change your voicemail greeting to say you're on a job and will text back, then text back. It doesn't book the job, but a text within minutes keeps a share of the customers who'd otherwise ring the next name.
Enquiry to booked job in 90 seconds, while Dean was under a sink two streets away.
An example call, written out. Not a recording.
A customer with water through the ceiling is ringing to make the problem somebody else's. The moment it rings out, the problem is still theirs, and the next name on the list is one tap away. They aren't being disloyal; they don't know you yet. The whole relationship is the ring.
The same is true, more slowly, of the enquiry for a bathroom. They ring three firms. Whoever answers, or whoever gets back first with a text that says it arrived, is the one who feels like a business. The other two feel like a gamble.
Not the value of the job, because you wouldn't have won every missed call anyway. The honest number is the share of missed calls that were real jobs, times the share you'd have won by answering, times what those jobs are worth to you. For most trades that's still a figure that pays for any answering service many times over. Count a week of your own missed calls and do the sum with your own job values.
The other number is the one nobody counts: the time you spend ringing back people who've already booked someone, and the evenings spent returning calls that could have been booked on the spot.
Nobody has a reliable figure, and the ones vendors quote aren't traced to a source, so we don't print one. Look at your own phone's missed call list for a week. That's your number.
Yes, and it's the cheapest thing on this page. A text within minutes saying you're on a job keeps some customers. It doesn't book the job, and a customer with a flood won't wait for your text, which is where answering comes in.
If you're on the tools most of the day, you're the person it's for. The maths is one extra job a month against the fee, with your own trade's job values.
Answers it in your business's name, works out the job, books it into the hours you've opened and texts the customer to confirm. Nothing with a price on it goes out without your yes.
Two plans, printed in full. No tier you have to call to find out the price.
You, your van and your phone.
Up to ten of you, ten diaries.
Pay for the year at ten months' price. Cancel any time and the unused time is refunded.
Fifteen minutes on Teams with a real person. Bring the call you lost last week and we'll show you how it would have gone.
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