What missed calls cost plumbing and HVAC businesses (2026)

What the public data says (checked October 18, 2026)

1. How many calls go unanswered

• 52% of calls to home-services businesses are answered by a person, and 65% of calls longer than 15 seconds are. That is Invoca's 2026 Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks report (published July 2026), drawn from more than 70 million calls across 10 industries. Invoca, July 2026.
• 28% of inbound calls go unanswered on average, according to CallRail's own call data, cited in a CallRail article dated June 4, 2026. This figure covers CallRail customers across industries, not trades only. CallRail, June 4, 2026.

The two sources measure different things. Invoca counts every call that doesn't reach a person, including very short calls, while CallRail reports an average across its customers. We use 28% as our base because it is the lower number, and 35% (the share of calls over 15 seconds that Invoca finds unanswered) as a higher scenario.

2. How many of those callers are real jobs, and how many book

• 38% of home-services calls answered by a person are leads, and 45% of those leads convert on the call. Same Invoca 2026 report. Invoca, July 2026.
• The same report notes that 55% of home-services businesses don't ask leads to buy or book the job, so the 45% booking rate already includes a lot of calls that weren't closed well.

3. Whether a missed caller leaves a voicemail

• 69% of callers who reached voicemail hung up instead of leaving a message, in Moneypenny's Small Business Call Report (a survey of 300 businesses with 0 to 9 employees plus call data from 10,000 businesses). It was published on November 21, 2016, so it is old, and Moneypenny sells call-handling services. We found no newer primary study and flag it as the weakest input. Moneypenny, November 21, 2016 (page checked October 18, 2026).

4. Why speed matters even when you do call back

• In "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads," a study of 1.25 million leads found that firms that tried to contact a prospect within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (a real conversation with a decision maker) as firms that waited even one hour more, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or longer. Their audit of 2,241 US companies also found 23% never responded to a web lead at all. Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, Harvard Business Review, March 2011. HBR, March 2011 (checked October 18, 2026; full text is for subscribers).

The study is about web leads, not phone calls, and it is from 2011, so we don't put it into the model. It is the reason we treat a voicemail returned hours later as only partly recovered in real life, even though the model counts it as fully recovered.

5. What one job is worth

• Hiring a plumber costs an average of $341 (normal range $182 to $501). HomeAdvisor, updated June 19, 2026.
• The average cost of HVAC repair is $350 (normal range $130 to $2,000). HomeAdvisor, updated June 19, 2026.

These are repair tickets. Installs, replacements and maintenance plans are worth far more, and so is a customer who comes back for years, so the model understates what a lost caller costs a shop that does that work.

The model

Results: revenue lost to missed calls

Each truck is assumed to bring in 100 calls/month. "Lost jobs" is first visits only, at the base 28% missed rate. The last column repeats the year at the higher 35% rate.

Worked example, one-truck plumbing shop: 100 × 0.28 × 0.38 × 0.45 × 0.69 = 3.3 lost jobs/month. 3.3 × $341 = about $1,127/month, or about $13,519/year.

What the model leaves out

• It probably undercounts. It ignores repeat business, referrals, maintenance plans and installs, and it treats every voicemail as recovered even though a callback hours later loses many of those jobs, as the speed-to-lead research above suggests.
• It could overcount if your missed calls are mostly spam, vendors or existing customers. In that case use a lower lead share.
• Calls per truck is our assumption, not a sourced figure. It is the input most worth replacing with your own number.
• The sources measure different populations: Invoca covers its home-services customers, CallRail its customer base, and Moneypenny UK and US micro-businesses in 2016.

Where Unmanually fits

Unmanually is a 24/7 AI Office Manager for trade businesses. You talk to it by voice from your phone, and it does the office work: it calls leads back fast, books jobs, sends quotes and invoices, chases payments, orders from suppliers and handles email and texts. It asks before anything that spends money or can't be undone. Hours of office work become minutes of talking. It runs on your own Twilio or Telnyx number; we don't sell numbers. Plans start at $49/month. Unmanually launches November 1, 2026, and it has no customer results yet, so this page uses public data only.

Sources (all checked October 18, 2026)

1. Invoca, "2026 Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report," July 2026. invoca.com
2. CallRail, "The difference between a missed call and a missed customer (and how to close the gap)," June 4, 2026. callrail.com
3. Moneypenny, "Small Business Call Report," November 21, 2016. moneypenny.com
4. Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K., and Elkington, D., "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads," Harvard Business Review, March 2011. hbr.org
5. HomeAdvisor, "Cost to hire a plumber," updated June 19, 2026. homeadvisor.com
6. HomeAdvisor, "What does HVAC repair cost?," updated June 19, 2026. homeadvisor.com