Stop losing jobs
to missed calls.

In a 2011 Harvard Business Review article, researchers audited 2,241 US companies and found most were slow to respond to web leads. In a separate look at 1.25 million leads at 42 US companies, firms that tried to call back within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that tried an hour or more later. It's an older study of company sales teams, not tradies, but the pattern is familiar to anyone who's rung three plumbers.

For a trade the window can be shorter still. A burst pipe or a power outage gets fixed by whoever answers first.

Four questions about how you work, and a set-up to match. Much of it costs little.

A voicemail greeting and an automatic text should do three things: say who they've reached, say when you'll call back, and ask what the job is. 'Hi, it's Dave from Wattle and Wire Electrical. I'm on a job and will call you back before 3pm. Text me what you need and your suburb.' That keeps the caller from ringing the next number, and gives you what you need to call back properly.

Then keep the promise. A call back at 2.45pm, as promised, builds more trust than an instant answer from someone who's distracted. It's the same idea as the booking window on the trades hub: people cope with waiting, not with not knowing.

If calls come from your website or ads, track them. Google Ads can count answered calls from ads and calls from your website as conversions. Missed calls belong in your call reports and call tracking, not in conversions, and call tracking tools show them by time of day.

Look at the pattern after a month. If most missed calls land between 10am and 2pm, that's when you need cover, not 24/7. The trades hub has a calculator for what those missed calls are costing.