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What are missed calls costing you?
Four boxes, three of them multiplied: the calls you don't get to, the share that would have booked, and what a job bills. The month's figure appears as you type.
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How do you calculate the cost of a missed call?
Three numbers give you the answer: how many rings you don't get to in a week, how often a call you do answer turns into a job, and what an average job bills. Multiply them together, stretch the week into a month, and you have the revenue those calls were carrying.
The booking rate is where guesses go wrong. ServiceTitan's 2022 platform data, taken from 3,000+ US and Canadian trade shops, puts a typical shop at 42% of inbound calls booked, and a shop with fewer than five technicians at 24%. If you have never counted yours, that is the number to start from.
The calculator below is deliberately plain. It multiplies what you type and shows the one assumption it makes, because a tool that forecasts your revenue is making a claim about your business that nobody can stand behind. Use it to see how big the gap might be, then test the answer on your own line.
Your numbers
What those missed calls would have been worth if they had booked at your rate — arithmetic on your inputs, not a prediction.
— a month
Assumes a missed call books at the same rate as an answered one.
What does the calculator multiply?
Four boxes, three of them in the sum. The first one, calls per week, is not multiplied — it is there so you can weigh the miss count against your real volume before you believe it.
Calls you miss in a week
No default, and no percentage. A pre-filled miss rate would be us telling you how many calls you lose, which is not a thing we can know about your phone.
One week into one month
The weekly figure is multiplied by 52 divided by 12 — about 4.3 weeks. Four-week months look tidier and quietly lose you a month a year.
Your booking rate
The share of answered calls that become jobs. It starts at 42%, labeled with whose number that is, and it is the field most worth replacing with your own.
Average job value
What one of those jobs bills. Those three multiplied give the monthly figure, and it stays blank until all three have numbers in them.
Decide with your ears — not a sales deck.
Paste your website and talk to your own receptionist, free, in your browser.
Where does the 42% booking rate come from?
From ServiceTitan's October 2022 report on call booking rates, drawn from more than 3,000 trade businesses in the US and Canada. It is vendor platform data rather than a survey, and it is four years old — which is exactly why the field is editable and its label names the source.
Two qualifiers travel with the number. The 42% describes a typical shop; shops with fewer than five technicians booked 24%, and shops with 25 technicians or more booked 59% (ServiceTitan, 2022). A one-truck operation that leaves 42% in the box will overstate what its missed calls were worth.
So use your own rate if you can get at it: jobs booked divided by calls answered, over a month you can actually count. Your own number beats any benchmark, and it is the one you can defend to yourself. The missed-calls page has the rest of what that gap does to a small shop.
What does the number leave out?
Four assumptions sit inside the arithmetic. None of them is hidden, and each one can push the figure the wrong way.
| The assumption | Why it can be wrong |
|---|---|
| Every missed call would have booked at your answered rate | A ring is not a lead. Wrong numbers, sales calls and the same person trying you twice all land in the miss count. |
| Every booked job is worth the average | A service call and an install are not the same money. If your work splits in two, run the numbers twice instead of averaging them. |
| The caller was still there to be booked | Some had already dialed the next name on the list by the time you saw the missed call. That job was gone before you rang back. |
| Answering the call converts it | Answering buys you the conversation, not the job. What a phone can fix is the half that never got a conversation at all. |
The figure is your arithmetic on your inputs. It is not a Heyline promise.
What the number never claims
It never says Heyline will earn you that money. She answers the rings you send her; whether a caller books is still down to the caller, your prices and what your calendar has open.
It doesn't count calls she can't take. With forwarding on she gets the busy and unanswered rings only — the ones you pick up yourself never reach her at all.
She never rings or texts anyone back to rescue a missed call. Outbound is not something she does. Ringing that caller back stays your job, and the To-dos page holds what you need to do it: the number, the message, the answers she collected.
She never books more than 14 days out, never inside the next hour, and never puts a price on a job unless your notes carry one.
What do you do with the number?
Check it against a real call. Paste your website address, wait about sixty seconds, and you can talk to her in your browser and hear what one of those callers would have got. Across 26 real business websites in an internal July 2026 test, the build averaged about 25 seconds. No account, no card.
Then let the phone answer the question properly. Once she is live, the dashboard does the counting for real: how many calls came in, how many turned into appointments, how many minutes they used. The calls, the bookings and the minutes are counted; the dollar figure beside them is those bookings times an average you set. The one above is arithmetic on a guess.
Going live is the separate decision: a plan from $99 a month, a card on file, and one code dialed on your handset. The forwarding guide has the code for your carrier and pricing has the rest.
Frequently asked questions
How is the monthly figure calculated?
Three of the four boxes are multiplied. The calls you miss in a week are stretched to a month at 52 divided by 12, then multiplied by your booking rate and by your average job value. Calls per week sits outside the sum — it is context for the miss count, not part of it.
What booking rate should I put in?
Yours, if you know it: jobs booked divided by calls answered, over a month you can count. If you have never measured it, keep the pre-filled rate and treat it as a placeholder, then replace it the first month you count. A one-truck shop should expect a lower number than a typical one.
How do I work out how many calls I miss?
Your handset already knows most of it. Count one week of missed-call entries, then add the rings that arrived while you were already on a call, since some phones log those somewhere else or not at all. One counted week beats a remembered month every time.
What average job value should I use?
What a first visit usually bills, not your best job of the year. If your work splits into a cheap call-out and an expensive install, run it twice rather than averaging the two, because one figure sitting between them describes neither job honestly.
Does this predict what Heyline would make me?
No. It multiplies numbers you typed; it does not describe your business. Every missed call is assumed to book at the rate an answered one does, and no calculator can separate a real job from a wrong number or a second try by the same person. Read it as the size of the gap.
Why doesn't it work out what Heyline would cost me?
Because subtracting a plan price from a figure you just estimated is a sales pitch, not arithmetic. The gap above is yours to size. What the plans cost is published to the dollar, and what you would actually use depends on your call volume and how long your calls run. Put the two side by side yourself.
Now put a voice on the other half.
Paste your website and hear her take one of those calls. Free, in your browser, nothing to sign.
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