Free calculator · sources checked November 2, 2026
What Do Missed Calls Cost Your Business?Your Numbers, Not Ours.
Nobody has a trustworthy “average cost of a missed call,” so this calculator asks for yours: calls a week, the share you miss, and what one sale is worth. Every starting figure comes from a named study, listed below with the date we checked it, and you can change all of them. On the example numbers, a home-services business loses about $4,195 a month.
Jump to: The calculator How it works Texts and emails Numbers we left out Sources
The Calculator
Put In Your Numbers. See the Cost.
Pick a preset, then change any field to match your business. The result updates as you type. Nothing is sent anywhere; the math runs on this page.
Count a normal week on your phone system. The example uses 40.
Starts at 27%, the share of home-services calls Invoca found unanswered (2024). Your phone log has your real number.
Starts at 58%: everyone who does not leave a voicemail, from CallRail’s 2025 survey (42% said they leave one).
Starts at 46%, Invoca’s 2025 home-services figure; 37% across all industries. Use your own close rate if you know it.
Starts at $336, HomeAdvisor’s average plumbing visit. Last month’s revenue divided by last month’s jobs is your real number.
1 = first sale only. 3 = a customer who comes back three times. This is the lifetime-value line below.
Revenue lost to missed calls
$4,195
a month · $50,345 a year
Arithmetic on your inputs, nothing more. It leaves out callers who try again later and your close rate on a bad day. The starting figures and their sources are listed below.
Free 6-minute demo. No card. No sales call.
How It Works
Four Steps, All of Them Visible.
Calls a week × share missed × share who never call back × share who would have bought × the value of one sale. The lifetime-value line multiplies the result by how many times a customer typically buys. Every step is a number you can see and change.
1. Calls You Miss
Calls a week × the share you miss. The example: 40 calls, 27% missed, about 11 calls nobody answered.
2. Callers You Lose
Missed calls × the share who never call back. In CallRail’s survey only 42% leave a voicemail, so the calculator starts by treating the other 58% as gone.
3. Sales You Lose
Lost callers × the share who would have bought. Invoca: 46% of home-services phone leads convert, 37% across industries.
4. Dollars
Lost sales × what one sale is worth. The example lands near $4,195 a month, about $50,345 a year, on a $336 average job.
Why 58% and not the “85% never call back” you may have read elsewhere: that 85% has no study behind it. CallRail’s 2025 survey found 42% of consumers leave a voicemail when nobody answers, so we count the rest as lost. If your callers try again more often, lower the number.
Texts, Forms and Emails
For Written Leads, the Cost Is Speed.
Nobody has published a trustworthy dollar figure for a missed text or email, so this page does not invent one. What is documented is speed: James Oldroyd’s 2007 study found the odds of qualifying a lead fall 21 times between a 5-minute and a 30-minute response, and a 2011 Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 companies found 23% never answered a web lead at all.
Leads that arrive in writing, not by phone.
Be honest: nights, weekends and job sites count.
Leads answered after the 5-minute window
15
a week · about 780 a year
Each of those leads is in the slow lane Oldroyd measured: 21× lower odds of qualifying at 30 minutes than at 5. We show the count, not a dollar figure, because no study supports one. How speed to lead works.
Numbers We Left Out
The Missed-Call Statistics That Have No Study Behind Them.
Most “missed call statistics” pages repeat each other. We traced the common ones to their origin before building this page; these three did not survive, so they are not in the calculator.
“85% never call back”
Traces to an unsourced blog post. No study behind it. CallRail’s survey says 42% leave a voicemail; we start from that instead.
“$126,000 a year lost”
Vendor arithmetic, not a study of real businesses. Your own inputs replace it.
“Phone leads convert 10–15× better”
Attributed to a BIA/Kelsey report that does not contain it. Left out.
Also left out: “62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered,” a 2016 411 Locals study we could not find online. It may be right; we just cannot check it, so the default is Invoca’s 27% instead.
Where Lexi Fits
Change the One Number You Control.
Lexi answers the phone 24/7, so the missed-call share becomes the calls you choose to send to voicemail. She says she is an AI, books appointments on your calendar, takes a message rather than guessing, and follows up with every lead who reached out. Set the missed share to what you would still send to voicemail and compare the two results.
$299 a month at founder pricing, locked for life, plus a one-time $100 setup fee and usage (calls $0.15/min, texts 3¢ a segment, email $0.002). Texting registration and a GoHighLevel CRM are included. The public price is $997 a month. No contract. U.S. businesses only. Compare every option on what an AI receptionist costs, or see what an AI receptionist is.
Free 6-minute demo. No card. No sales call.
Sources
Where Every Starting Number Comes From.
Checked on each publisher’s own page on November 2, 2026. Most are published by companies that sell phone or marketing software; we name them so you can weigh that yourself.
- CallRail, “Missed calls cost businesses more than ever” (2025): survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers; 78% abandoned a business after an unanswered call, 82% would call a competitor, 42% leave a voicemail.
- Invoca, “How much do missed sales calls cost home services businesses?” (2024): about 27% of home-services calls go unanswered.
- Invoca Buyer Conversion Benchmark Report (press release, June 10, 2025): 37% of phone leads convert during the call across industries, 46% in home services, from more than 60 million calls.
- Harvard Business Review, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” (Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington, March 2011): 23% of 2,241 companies never responded to a web lead; average response 42 hours; 7× the odds of qualifying a lead when contacted within an hour.
- Lead Response Management Study (James Oldroyd, 2007): the odds of qualifying a lead fall 21× between a 5-minute and a 30-minute response.
- HomeAdvisor, “How much does a plumber cost?”: average $336; most homeowners pay $180–$494.
- Reichheld & Sasser, “Zero Defections,” HBR 1990 and Reichheld & Schefter, HBR 2000: keeping 5% more customers raised profits by 25% to 95%.
Common Questions
Missed Calls: Your Questions
There is no reliable average: it depends on how many calls you get, how many you miss, how many of those callers give up, how many would have bought, and what one sale is worth to you. That is why this calculator asks for your numbers instead of claiming one. The starting figures are from named studies: in a 2025 CallRail survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, 78% said they had abandoned a business after an unanswered call and only 42% said they leave a voicemail; Invoca reports that 37% of phone leads convert during the call across industries and 46% in home services. Change any number to match your business.
Invoca, which analyzes business phone calls, reported in 2024 that about 27% of calls to home-services businesses go unanswered. A widely quoted older figure says 62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered; it comes from a 2016 study by 411 Locals that we could not find online, so we do not use it as a default. The honest answer for your business is your own number: count the missed calls on your phone system for a week.
In CallRail’s 2025 survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, 78% said they had abandoned a business after an unanswered call, 82% said they would call a competitor, and only 42% said they leave a voicemail. That is why the calculator starts with 58% of missed callers as lost: everyone who does not leave a message. It is a conservative read of that survey, and you can change it.
Invoca’s June 2025 benchmark, built on more than 60 million calls, found 37% of phone leads convert during the call across industries, and 46% in home services. Those are the two presets in the calculator. If you know your own close rate from calls, use it instead.
Nobody has published a trustworthy dollar figure for a missed text or email, so this page does not invent one. What is well documented is speed: a 2007 study by James Oldroyd found the odds of qualifying a lead drop 21 times between a 5-minute and a 30-minute response, and a 2011 Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 companies found 23% never answered a web lead at all, with an average response time of 42 hours. The second block of the calculator shows how many of your leads fall outside the 5-minute window.
Because a lost first sale is usually a lost customer, not one sale. If a customer typically comes back three times, each missed caller who would have bought cost you three sales. Set repeat purchases to 1 to see first-sale value only. The research on keeping customers is older but still cited: Bain’s Fred Reichheld found that keeping 5% more customers raised profits by 25% to 95%, published in Harvard Business Review in 1990 and 2000.
Use your own average ticket. If you do not know it, HomeAdvisor’s cost guide puts the average plumbing visit at $336, with most homeowners paying $180 to $494. The calculator’s plain starting figure of $200 is just that, a starting figure, not a statistic. Divide last month’s revenue by last month’s jobs for a quick real number.
It is arithmetic on your inputs, nothing more. Every default is from a named study with a check date, listed under Sources, and every one can be changed. It does not account for callers who call back later, for seasonality, or for your close rate on a bad day. Treat the result as a reasonable estimate, not a promise.
It answers the phone 24/7, so the missed-call share drops to the calls you choose to send to voicemail. Lexi says she is an AI, books appointments, takes a message rather than guessing, and follows up with every lead who reached out. Whether that pays off depends on your numbers above: compare the yearly figure with what you would spend. What an AI receptionist costs lays out the options side by side.
Lexi costs $299 a month at founder pricing, locked for life, plus a one-time $100 setup fee and usage. Usage: calls $0.15 per minute, texts 3 cents per segment (about 160 characters), and email $0.002 per email. Texting registration and a GoHighLevel CRM are included. The public price is $997 a month. No contract, and Lexi is available to U.S. businesses only.
Now Hear What an Answered Call Sounds Like.
Talk to Lexi for six minutes. Play one of your own customers and try to book an appointment, then decide what a missed call is really worth to you.
Talk to Lexi Now →No card. No sales call. U.S. businesses only.