How many calls is your business actually missing?

Ask a joiner or a plumber how many calls they miss in a week and you'll get a shrug and a number that sounds about right. Two, maybe three. That's a feeling. It isn't a count.

The feeling is nearly always low, and there's a plain reason for it. You remember the calls you saw. The one that came in at half four on a Friday while you were up a ladder left no mark on your memory at all. It left a mark on your phone, though, and that's the whole trick. The number is already sitting in your pocket. Nobody ever goes and adds it up.

This is how to add it up. It takes about a minute a day for a fortnight and it costs nothing.

Before you count anything, decide what you're counting. Most people picture one thing, a phone ringing out in an empty office, and that's the smallest slice of it.

• It rang and nobody picked up.
• The line was engaged because you were already on a call. Most second callers won't hang on.
• It went to voicemail and they hung up without leaving a message.
• It rang the office landline after hours or at the weekend.
• It diverted to your mobile, and your mobile was in the van, or in a loft, or on charge in the kitchen.
• You answered, said you'd ring them back, and didn't.

That last one stings, but it belongs on the list. From the caller's side there's no real difference between a phone that rang out and a callback that never came.

One more rule, and it matters for the arithmetic later. If the same number rings you three times in ten minutes, that's one missed customer, not three. Count people, not rings.

Your mobile. Open Recents and filter to missed. This is the best record you have, because it logs incoming calls whether or not anyone left a message. The catch is that the list rolls over and old entries drop off the bottom. Screenshot it at the end of each day and you'll never lose a week.

Your landline records. On BT Business you can download the itemised bill as two CSV files from My Account. Be warned that a bill lists what you were charged for, so it's mostly calls you made, not calls you missed. It's still worth ten minutes in your provider's portal to find out what incoming records, if any, you can actually get, because they're not all the same.

1471, which will disappoint you. BT says 1471 tells you the last number that called. That's the whole of it, one caller. BT also says 1471 won't update if a call switches to BT Answer 1571 when the line is busy. It's useful for chasing someone who rang five minutes ago and useless for counting.

Your voicemail. Count the messages, then accept that the true figure is higher. In my experience plenty of people who ring a business and get a recording hang up and ring the next name on the list. Treat the voicemail count as a floor. It isn't your answer. BT Answer 1571 is free on BT Business lines, so if you're not even collecting that floor, start there.

Google, if you used to check it. Google Business Profile dropped call history on 31 July 2024. Calls from your listing still reach your phone, you just can't see a log of them in Google any more. If that was your source of truth, it isn't one now.

The customers themselves. For two weeks, ask everyone who does get through one question. Did you try us before you got hold of me? You'll hear things you won't enjoy. That's the useful part.

No software, no spreadsheet unless you want one.

Take a sheet of A4 and stick it on the van dash, or start a note on your phone. Four columns. Date. Time. Which number they rang, mobile or landline. Whether contact was ever made, either by them ringing back or by you ringing them.

Every evening, run down your missed calls and copy across anything that looks like a customer. The wholesaler, your accountant and the obvious spam all come off. It takes a minute.

Add a fifth column later, once you know how each one ended. Won, lost, or never found out. Never found out is a real category and you'll have plenty in it.

Run it for a fortnight. One week can be a freak week, a burst pipe week or a dead week, and you'd be building your whole picture on it. Two weeks with a weekend in the middle is enough to see a shape. Divide the total by two and you've got calls missed per week, which is the only number you actually needed.

Once you've got a fortnight on paper, look at when the entries land. Nearly every business has a shape, and it's rarely the one the owner expected.

• Between twelve and two, when you're eating or driving.
• After half five, when people get home from work and start ringing about the thing that's annoyed them all day.
• First thing Monday.
• Saturday morning, for anything domestic.
• Any stretch when you were already on the phone. Check how your own setup logs those, because on some systems an engaged call never shows as a missed one at all.

Weather moves it too. A cold snap or a bad gale rearranges a whole week for a plumber or a roofer.

Those are patterns I've watched rather than figures I can prove, and I'm not going to hand you a percentage split, because I don't have one that's honest and yours wouldn't match anyone else's anyway. That's the point of measuring your own. The shape tells you what kind of problem you've got. Calls spread evenly through the working day mean you need cover while you're on the tools. Calls stacked after six and at weekends mean you need cover when you're finished, which is a different problem and usually a cheaper one.

Two numbers and a bit of multiplication.

First, what a job is worth. Pull your last twenty invoices and take the middle one. Ignore the average. One big commercial job drags an average somewhere silly and you end up believing a figure that never actually happens.

Second, your win rate on the enquiries you do answer. Of ten people who get through and want a price, how many turn into work? Be honest with yourself. To show the sum, say three in ten.

Multiply the two and you've got roughly what a missed call is worth. A £300 job at three in ten is £90 a call. Then multiply by the calls you miss in a week, and by 52.

Two caveats, one pulling in each direction. Not every missed call was a job, which is why you stripped out the suppliers and the spam. And a customer is usually worth more than a single invoice, because of the repeat work and the person they tell. So the arithmetic is rough. It's still a lot closer than the shrug you started with.

Some of what you find has nothing to do with buying anything.

If you're missing less than one real call a week, don't spend money on it. Record a voicemail greeting that promises a call back by a specific time, then keep the promise. That fixes most of it.

If the calls are stacked after six and at weekends, you need something covering those hours. That might be a family member, an answering service, or an AI receptionist. On a BT line you can send calls onward only when it suits: forward everything with *21*, only when the line's engaged with *67*, or only when it rings out with *61*, which diverts after about twenty seconds. Whoever ends up answering, that's the plumbing.

Here's my side of it, plainly. EdgeAudit puts an AI receptionist behind the number you already have, using call forwarding, so nothing on your van or your website changes. It takes the caller's name, their number and what they need, then texts you the lead. You choose when it answers: only when you're already on a call, only after hours, weekends, or all the time. Setup takes about five days from your go-ahead to your line being covered, and it's included at no charge.

These are the questions I'd want answered before I paid anybody, so here are mine. Pricing starts at £249 a month, flat, with a monthly call allowance rather than a per-minute meter. Above the allowance it's £0.65 a call on Starter and £0.45 a call on Pro. I'm not VAT registered, being under the £90,000 turnover threshold, so no VAT is added and the price on the page is the price you pay. If that ever changes, you'll get written notice first. The contract is 30 day rolling with no minimum term, so you can cancel any time. The only thing that ties you in is the annual option, which takes 15 percent off if you pay a year up front. The tiers and the allowances are all on the pricing page.

What I won't do is dress it up. There is no published case study here, because I'm not inventing one. One of them is a joinery business that was missing roughly ten out of hours calls a month before they started. I can tell you what they were missing. I'm not telling you what changed, because I haven't measured it properly yet. When I have, it goes on the site with the method attached.

Do the fortnight first. A number off your own phone is worth more than anything I could tell you.

When you've got it, put it into the missed call calculator. It asks three things: the calls you miss in a week, what a typical job, sale or booking is worth, and how many of those you'd have won. It's arithmetic on your own inputs and nothing more, but seeing the yearly figure written down tends to settle the argument one way or the other.

If it turns out you've no real problem, grand. You've spent a fortnight and learned something solid about your own business. If it turns out you have, there's more on how cover works for tradesmen, or on call answering here in Northern Ireland. Or just tell me what you found.