What do missed calls cost your shop?

The cost of a missed call is the job, not the minute.

For a service business, the phone is the storefront. Industry studies consistently find that a large share of callers who reach voicemail simply do not leave a message: they call the next shop on the list. That is what makes missed calls expensive. The cost isn't the phone minute, it's the whole job, and for emergency trades like locksmiths or plumbers it's often the highest-value job of the day, because urgent callers buy from whoever answers first.

The leak compounds quietly. Ten missed calls a week doesn't feel like a crisis on any single day, but at a $250 average ticket and a typical 40% booking rate it works out to more than four thousand dollars a month in revenue that rang your number and then booked somewhere else. The shops that fix it rarely do it by hiring: a full-time receptionist costs several thousand dollars a month and still sleeps at night. They fix it by making sure every call gets answered, which is exactly what a 24/7 AI receptionist is for: it answers in a natural voice, opens the job with the right template, and drops it on the dispatch board while your techs stay on the tools.

If you're comparing platforms on this exact problem, the honest place to start is what call answering costs elsewhere: it is usually a paid add-on. Our Linq vs Jobber comparison covers where the add-on bills hide, and Linq pricing is flat, with the receptionist included on every plan.

Methodology

Monthly leak = missed calls per week × 4.33 (average weeks per month) × booking rate × average job value. Annual leak = monthly leak × 12. The recoverable figure applies a conservative 85% capture factor: a 24/7 receptionist answers effectively every call, but not every answered call books. The return figure divides the recoverable monthly revenue by the Crew plan price ($149/month). All inputs are yours; nothing is stored or sent anywhere.