What a missed call actually costs a BC trades business
Walk through the real arithmetic of unanswered phones for fencing, electrical, and collision businesses in BC — and what it means for a $500/month answering budget.
Every trades owner we talk to knows they miss calls. Almost none of them have done the arithmetic on what that costs, because the number feels unknowable. It isn’t. You need three figures, and you probably know two of them already.
The three numbers
How many calls you miss per week. Industry studies put unanswered rates for small service businesses between 38% and 62% of inbound calls during working hours — before counting evenings and weekends. If you’re on a ladder, under a car, or running a crew, you are not answering at 2 pm on a Tuesday. Check your phone’s missed-call log for the last seven days; that log undercounts (it misses the calls that went to a full voicemail box), but it’s a floor.
What a booked job is worth. For a fencing contractor in the Lower Mainland, an average residential job runs into the thousands. For an electrician, a service call-out with follow-on work lands around $350–$800. For a collision shop, an insurance repair is worth four figures. Use your own average ticket — you know it.
How many callers try the next name. Around 85% of callers who reach voicemail don’t leave a message. They don’t call back later. They call your competitor, who answered.
The arithmetic
Take a conservative electrician example: 10 missed calls a week, half of them genuine job enquiries, a $400 average ticket, and a normal 30% close rate on answered calls.
That’s 5 real opportunities × 30% × $400 = $600 a week walking away — roughly $31,000 a year — on the most conservative inputs. Run it with a fencing contractor’s ticket size and the number gets uncomfortable quickly.
What to do about it
You have three options, honestly compared:
- An office admin answers ~40 hours a week, costs $45,000+/year, and still misses evenings and weekends — when emergency-rate work calls.
- A human answering service takes messages for a few hundred a month. Messages aren’t bookings; you still spend evenings calling people back, and many have moved on.
- An AI receptionist answers every call in seconds, asks your qualifying questions, books directly into your calendar, and texts back hang-ups — 24/7, for a flat monthly fee in the hundreds.
We build the third option for BC trades businesses, so we’re not neutral — but the arithmetic above doesn’t need us to be. Run your own numbers. If the leak is small, keep your setup. If it’s $30,000+, the fix costs less than a tenth of the leak.
Written by Jazz Grewal, who builds these systems for BC service businesses.