Missed call statistics for contractors
By Jared Ohman · Updated June 2026
Missed calls are the quietest expense in the trades. They never show up on an invoice, so they are easy to ignore. Here are the figures HeyDiane works from, and what they likely cost your shop every month.
27%
of calls the average trades shop misses
$350
what a missed routine job is worth
$700–$1,200
what a missed emergency is worth
The numbers, plainly
The figure HeyDiane works from is that the average trades shop misses about 27% of its calls. Roughly one in four. That is not a bad week, it is the steady pattern, because the hours people call a contractor are the same hours the contractor is on a roof, under a sink, or driving between jobs.
And those calls are not cheap to lose. A missed call is worth about $350 on a routine job, and $700 to $1,200 on an emergency. The emergency is the cruel part: the no-heat call in January is the most valuable call you can get, and it is the one least likely to leave a voicemail. They call you, you do not answer, they call the next name on the list.
What it adds up to in a month
The percentage feels small until you put dollars on it. Take your call volume for a month, apply that roughly 27% miss rate, and put a realistic value on each lost call. Even a modest shop fielding a few dozen calls a week is leaving real money on the table by the end of the month, and most of it is invisible because a call that never connects never gets counted.
The point is not to guess. Run your own numbers and see the figure for your shop, not an average.
What you can do about it
You cannot answer every call yourself, and a voicemail box does not catch the people who hang up on it. The fix is to make sure something useful happens on the calls you cannot pick up: the caller gets heard, their details get captured, and the job gets booked or escalated. That is what an AI receptionist does, and it is built for exactly the one-to-ten-truck shops these figures hit hardest.
Common questions
How many calls do contractors actually miss?
The figure HeyDiane works from is that the average trades shop misses about 27% of its calls. That is not a slow day, it is a roughly one-in-four pattern across the year, driven by being on jobs, on roofs, and on the road during exactly the hours people call.
What is a missed call worth to a contractor?
HeyDiane uses these figures: a missed call is worth about $350 on a routine job, and $700 to $1,200 on an emergency. A homeowner with a flooded basement or no heat is the most valuable call you can get, and it is the one most likely to be dialing the next number when you do not pick up.
How do I work out what missed calls cost my shop?
Take your monthly call volume, apply the roughly 27% miss rate, and put a realistic job value on each one using the $350 routine and $700 to $1,200 emergency figures. The missed-call calculator does this for you in a few seconds so you can see the monthly number for your own shop.
Why do missed calls cost so much in the trades?
Because the caller has an urgent, expensive problem and very little patience. When you do not answer, they do not wait. They call the next contractor on the list. So a missed call is not a delayed job, it is usually a job that goes to a competitor.