Research note · September 2026 · about 6 minutes · this is the thinking behind what Cutting Hedge builds
Someone with a leaking pipe or a broken gate wants to talk to somebody now. If you don’t pick up, they may not leave a voicemail. They may just ring the next number — and you’d never know the job existed.
The short version
- Businesses that got back to an online enquiry within an hour were nearly 7× as likely to have a real conversation with the customer as those that waited longer.
- Not every missed call is a lost job. Anyone quoting you a single “you’re losing €X” figure is guessing.
- Four numbers from your own phone will tell you what it’s actually worth to you.
Not every missed call is lost money
It’s tempting to say every missed call is a lost job. It isn’t. Some are spam, wrong numbers, existing customers, people shopping for the cheapest price, or someone three counties outside where you work.
The useful question is narrower: how many genuine jobs are slipping past, and what are they worth to you?
What the research says about speed
The best-known study was published in Harvard Business Review in 2011. Researchers sent test enquiries through the websites of 2,241 US companies and timed the replies.
| How quickly companies responded | Share |
|---|---|
| Within an hour | 37% |
| Within 1–24 hours | 16% |
| More than 24 hours | 24% |
| Never responded | 23% |
Among the ones that did reply within 30 days, the average wait was 42 hours.
A separate study by the same researchers looked at 1.25 million sales enquiries across 42 US companies. The difference speed made was stark.
7×
Firms that tried to reach the customer within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to get a meaningful conversation as firms that waited longer — and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited a day or more.
That study was about online enquiries, not phone calls to Irish tradespeople. It doesn’t prove every missed call would have become a job. What it does show is that an enquiry goes cold fast. The longer someone waits, the more likely they’ve moved on.
Two other figures get quoted a lot. Both come from companies that sell lead-response software, so treat them as pointing in a direction, not as settled fact:
- InsideSales (2021) analysed 5.7 million inbound leads at more than 400 companies and reported conversion rates over eight times higher in the first five minutes than between five minutes and 24 hours.
- Valve+Meter, as cited by Convoso, reported that 95% of US home-services companies didn’t respond within five minutes, 71% didn’t within an hour, and 55% didn’t within a day. The full method isn’t published on the page.
Work out what it’s worth to you
You don’t need a complicated model. Four numbers will do.
| Number | What it means |
|---|---|
| Monthly enquiries | New calls, web forms and messages in a month |
| Missed or delayed share | How many go unanswered or don’t get a prompt reply |
| Booking rate | How many of those would realistically have turned into jobs |
| Profit per job | What’s left after materials and direct costs — not the invoice total |
Multiply them together. Here’s a made-up example — not an average, not a claim about anyone’s business:
80 enquiries a month × 20% missed × 25% would have booked × €250 profit per job = €1,000 a month
Your numbers will be different, and the trade matters. An emergency plumber gets urgent calls where the customer decides in minutes. A roofing job is worth more but takes longer to land. A landscaper might get lots of small enquiries and a handful of good projects. The point isn’t the €1,000. It’s swapping a vague worry for a number you can actually check.
Why calls get missed
It’s not bad customer service. You’re driving, up a ladder, in a noisy house, or holding a tool you can’t put down. There’s no receptionist and no call queue.
The real problem is that there’s usually no record. The missed calls sit in your phone’s log, you remember some of them, and the rest disappear. Before fixing anything, it’s worth a few weeks of noting:
- how many calls come in during working hours, and how many outside them
- how many are answered, rejected, or go to voicemail
- how long it takes unanswered callers to hear back
- how many are outside your area or for work you don’t do
- how many genuine enquiries turn into quotes, and then into jobs
What a text-back can and can’t do
A missed-call text-back sends something short straight away: sorry we missed you, this is [business] — reply with where you are and what the job is, and we’ll ring you back.
That can keep the customer from ringing the next number. It can’t create hours in your day, guarantee a booking, or handle an emergency. And it shouldn’t pretend anyone has looked at the problem when nobody has. (More on getting that balance right: qualifying enquiries without losing the human touch.)
| Step | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Missed call noticed | Logged honestly — not pretending the call was answered |
| Text sent straight away | Lets the customer know they’ve been heard and when to expect a call |
| Basic details collected | Where, what job, how urgent, a good time to ring |
| You look at it | You decide what happens next |
| Reminder | A nudge if nobody has rung them back |
| Outcome noted | Not suitable, quoted, booked, lost, or waiting |
For anything safety-critical, the message should point people to emergency services or urgent help. An automated text should never diagnose a problem or tell someone a situation is safe.
How to tell if it’s working
Keep four to eight weeks of your own numbers before, then the same length of time after. Count what matters: enquiries, missed calls, how fast people hear back, conversations recovered, quotes sent, jobs booked, and the profit from those jobs. Not how many texts went out.
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| New enquiries | ||
| Missed calls | ||
| Typical time to reply | ||
| Conversations recovered | ||
| Quotes sent | ||
| Jobs booked | ||
| Profit from recovered jobs |
Watch for the downsides too. Are texts going out at unreasonable hours? Are people getting duplicates? Is a personal number being exposed? Are urgent enquiries sitting unread? Are you getting more notifications than you can handle?
What this research can’t tell you
The strongest evidence here is about US web enquiries, and it’s from 2011. The more recent figures come from companies selling response software. None of it measures missed phone calls to Irish tradespeople, and nobody has a trustworthy figure for how much the average trades business loses to them.
What the evidence does support is modest: enquiries lose value when replies are slow, and a lot of businesses have no reliable way of replying quickly. The only way to know what that costs you is to measure it.
Help me find out
I run a gardening business, and I’ve lost jobs to missed calls myself. I’m running a short survey asking local tradespeople which parts of the admin cause the most trouble — including missing calls while you’re working and following up with people who don’t book. It takes 6–8 minutes, and leaving your contact details is optional.
Keep reading
- Can AI qualify customer enquiries without losing the human touch?
- Why an AI cash-flow assistant may matter more than an AI chatbot
- The human side of AI in the trades: how trust is built
- 10 practical ways AI could help Irish trades businesses
Sources
- Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington — The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (Harvard Business Review, March 2011)
- InsideSales — Lead Response Study 2021 (vendor-published)
- Convoso — The Importance of Lead Response Time in Home Services (February 2024, citing Valve+Meter; vendor-published)