A missed call in a service business is not a lost message. It is a customer who had already decided to spend money and could not reach you, and they do not leave one — they call the next result.
Above a 15% missed rate is worth acting on. Above 25% it is the most expensive problem in the business.
Work out when they are missed
Before changing anything, find the pattern. Missed calls cluster, and the cluster tells you the fix.
During the working day — everyone is on a job. That is a coverage problem. Lunchtime — predictable and solvable with a rota. After hours and weekends — a different decision entirely. All at once, in bursts — a marketing spike nobody staffed for.
The fixes, cheapest first
Somebody whose job it is. In a business under a certain size the phone is everybody's job, which means it is nobody's. Naming one person for defined hours fixes more than any technology.
A rota for the gaps. Lunch and the end of the day are where most of them go.
An answering service for out of hours. Cheaper than one lost job a month in most trades.
Automatic answering where it fits, so a call is captured rather than ringing out. See voice.
Call back within the hour, always. A returned call within an hour recovers a large share of missed ones. At a day, it recovers very few.
The measurement that keeps it honest
Answer rate is an operations number and call volume is a marketing number. They fail for different reasons and are fixed by different people, which is why they are reported separately — see CallRail.
Watch the missed rate weekly for a month after any change. It moves fast, which makes it one of the few improvements you can prove.
What it is worth
Take your missed calls per month, multiply by your close rate, multiply by your average job value. That is the annual number, and for most service businesses it is larger than any cost they are currently arguing about.