What a missed call is worth: a worked example

Most figures you will see for the cost of a missed call are either very old, very broad, or impossible to trace. Even the good ones describe someone else's business. The number that matters is yours, and you can work out a fair estimate of it in about half an hour with your call log and your diary.

Below is a worked example, then a blank version for your own figures.

The four numbers you need

1. Missed calls a week. Your phone or phone system will show these. Use an ordinary week, not your quietest or your busiest.
2. How many of those were new enquiries. Ring a sample of them back, or use your own judgement. Leave out wrong numbers, sales calls and existing customers who would have rung again anyway.
3. How often a new enquiry turns into work when you do answer. If you answer ten new enquiries, how many become paid work?
4. What a typical first job is worth to you, in pounds.

Multiply the second, third and fourth together and you have a weekly figure. Multiply by the number of weeks you work in a year and you have an annual one.

An illustrative example

The numbers below are invented for this example. They are not research findings and do not describe any real business. They are there to show the method.

Picture a heating engineer working on their own. They look at their call log and find:

Six new enquiries, one in three of which would have become work, is two jobs a week. Two jobs at £180 is £360 a week. Over 46 working weeks, that is £16,560 a year of first jobs that rang and were not answered.

That figure is before any repeat work. If some of those customers would have come back for a service every year, or told a neighbour, the real number is higher.

Make it honest

The example makes some generous assumptions, and your own version should be stricter.

Some callers do ring back. Moneypenny's 2026 survey with Censuswide found 23% of UK consumers said they would keep trying after a missed call, and you will win some of your missed enquiries back that way. Take the ones you actually recovered off your count.

Not every caller who would have booked with you would have been a good job. Some would have wanted a quote and gone elsewhere on price. If your normal rate of turning enquiries into work already reflects that, you are fine. If you are guessing, guess low.

And be careful with the busiest weeks. They are when you miss the most calls, but they are also when you could least have fitted in extra work. Using a normal week keeps the figure realistic.

The blank version

New enquiries, times the share that become work, times the typical first job, times your working weeks.

What larger firms lose

For bigger businesses, the most careful UK estimates we have found come from insight6, which tested 219 UK professional-services firms with 430 enquiries by phone, email and live chat for Moneypenny in 2025. It modelled the annual revenue each firm loses through missed or poorly handled enquiries at an estimated £1.34 million for legal firms, £1.22 million for property services, £1.1 million for accountancy and £756,000 for financial services. Those are modelled estimates from a mystery-shopping exercise rather than audited losses, and they apply to much larger firms than a sole trader. They do show the same thing your own sum will: the cost builds up quietly, one unanswered call at a time.

What to do with your number

Once you have a figure, you have something to weigh any fix against, whether that is a second person on the phones at busy times, an answering service, or Ringar AI. If the fix costs less than the work you are losing, it is worth trying. If it does not, you have learned that too.