Missed call recovery guide

Most local-service businesses answer well under half of inbound calls during working hours and almost none after 6pm. The missed ones aren't lost because the job was bad — they're lost because nobody replied.

Where the leak is

• Unanswered calls during the day. On the tools, driving, or with a customer: the phone rings out. Voicemail is where enquiries go to die — most callers won't leave one.
• After 6pm and weekends. Demand doesn't stop when you do. If the website gives no route ("we'll call you back within the hour", a callback form, a text-back), the caller moves on.
• Slow web forms. A form answered the next morning has already been answered by someone else.
• Unfollowed quotes. A quote with no follow-up converts at a fraction of one with two polite nudges.

The fix, in order of payoff

1. Reply to every missed call within a minute — by text if you can't speak. Say who you are, ask what they need and where. A named automated assistant is fine; pretending to be a person is not.
2. Qualify before you call back. Job type, postcode (are they in your area?), urgency. That turns a callback into a booking.
3. Offer real slots. Availability must come from your diary or rules, never guessed.
4. Give safety guidance for emergencies (gas smell → National Gas Emergency 0800 111 999) and treat them as priority callbacks.
5. Track outcomes. Mark each recovered enquiry won/lost so you know what the fix is actually worth, rather than trusting a vendor's estimate.

Typical work this applies to

Any trade or local service that relies on the phone for new work.

Do it yourself or automate it

You can run this manually with a call-log review and a text template — many do for a while. Callkept automates the same steps: reply in seconds, qualify, check service area, book from real availability, notify you, and report weekly with confirmed revenue kept separate from estimates. Start with the free audit to see what your website currently does with a call you didn't hear on the van, or test a recovered enquiry on your own phone.