What are your missed calls actually worth?
Missed calls cost UK businesses money because most callers who cannot get through ring the next business on their list instead of trying again. This calculator puts a monthly figure on that: it takes the calls you miss in a typical week, strips out the ones that were never real enquiries, and multiplies the jobs you would realistically have won by what a typical job is worth to you.
What are your missed calls actually worth?
Deliberately cautious. We strip out the calls that were never going to become work.
We assume only half are worth having. The rest are sales calls, wrong numbers and time wasters.
We assume 85 in 100 will not ring back, and most will not leave a voicemail.
Voco starts at £49 a month. One recovered £500 sale covers 10 months of it.
Voco answers every call in seconds, takes the details, and books the work in or texts you straight away.
A receptionist typically costs £1,500 or more a month. Answering services charge per call. Voco is £49 a month, flat.
Call +44 333 043 6661 now. It is free, and you can judge it in ten seconds.
Get started from £49 a month Or try the personalised online demoYour weekly missed calls times 4.33 weeks in a month. We count only half of those as genuine new enquiries, assume 85 in 100 of the genuine ones never ring back, and apply your close rate to what is left. We round down and show ranges rather than single inflated figures. These assumptions are deliberately cautious: your real numbers may be higher.
Most missed calls are not lost jobs. This calculator strips out the noise and shows you what the rest are really costing, using deliberately cautious assumptions.
The real cost of missed calls for UK small businesses
Not every missed call is money lost. Some are sales calls, some are wrong numbers, and some callers will ring you back. The missed calls that hurt are the genuine new enquiries from people in a hurry: they work down a list, and the first business to answer usually wins the work. That is the cost this calculator estimates, and it deliberately rounds down at every step.
Why missed calls matter for tradespeople
For plumbers, electricians and locksmiths, the maths is unforgiving. A missed call could be a £2,500 boiler replacement that rang while you were finishing an £80 repair. The customer with a burst pipe does not leave a voicemail and wait: they call the next number on the list. Most of the calls you miss are worth nothing, which is exactly why the handful that were real jobs are so expensive.
The impact on clinics and practices
For dental and healthcare practices, a missed call is often a new patient who never becomes a patient. Someone in discomfort books the next practice that answers, and a new patient is rarely a single appointment: it is years of check-ups, hygiene visits and treatment plans walking to the practice down the street.
Property and lettings: speed wins
In lettings, the first agent to answer usually wins the instruction. A missed viewing request while you are out showing another property, a landlord enquiry at 6pm, a tenant emergency on a Saturday: none of these callers wait. They ring the next agent on their list.
What answering every call is worth
An AI receptionist like Voco answers every call 24/7, takes the details, and books the work in or texts you straight away. From £49 a month, it needs to recover one modest job to pay for itself many times over. Try the numbers above with your own figures, and if the result looks small, that is because we would rather under-promise than have you find out the hard way.
Frequently asked questions
We multiply the calls you miss in a typical week by 4.33 to get a monthly figure, then count only half of those as genuine new enquiries. We assume 85 in 100 of those genuine enquiries never ring back, apply your close rate to what is left, and multiply the jobs you would have won by your typical job value. We round down at each step and show a range rather than a single inflated figure.
It depends on what a typical job is worth to you, which is why this calculator asks for your own figures rather than quoting a national average. A missed call that would have become a £300 lockout call-out costs a locksmith more than a missed general enquiry costs a shop. The pattern is the same across trades, clinics and lettings: most callers who cannot get through ring the next business on their list rather than trying again.
The fairest way to judge is to hear it for yourself rather than take our word for it. Call the Voco demo line on +44 333 043 6661 and you will hear exactly what your callers would hear, from the greeting to the way it takes down a job. The call is free and takes less than a minute.
Yes. You keep your existing number and set up call divert from your current provider to your Voco number, so customers carry on dialling the number they already know. You choose whether to divert every call, only calls you do not answer, or only calls that arrive while you are already on the phone, and you can switch the divert off at any time.
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