Momentum answers
What does a missed call actually cost a business?
A missed call costs roughly your average job value multiplied by how many calls go unanswered, since most callers who reach voicemail simply call the next business instead of waiting for a callback. There is no universal dollar figure — the honest number is your own job value times your own missed-call count, not a borrowed industry average.
Owners consistently underestimate this number because missed calls don't show up anywhere — there's no line item for them, just a vague sense that some months are slower. Once a business actually starts logging missed calls for a week or two, the count is almost always higher than expected.
The real driver isn't the call itself, it's what happens next: a caller with an urgent need rarely waits. They move to the next result. That's why the fix that matters most is speed of reply, not persuading the caller to wait.