Tools · calculator
The money that never rang back: your calls a week against the share nobody answered, with the studies’ own answer rates beside your number.
Calls a week times 4.33 is the month. Times the share nobody answered is the missed calls; the log gives you that, or a study’s chip does. Times the share that were new enquiries is the calls that had a job in them, because a supplier or a wrong number costs an apology, not a sale. Times one minus the share who try again is the calls gone for good. Times your close rate is the jobs. Times the job value is the month, and twelve of those is the year.
Four of those six numbers are yours: the calls, the enquiries, the callers who try again, the close rate. The studies can stand in for the unanswered share, and the chips do that with the source named on each, but they cannot stand in for the other four, which is why every calculator that fills them in with an industry average gets a number for someone else’s business. The share who try again is the one those pages invent most freely, so here it is yours to type, with the reason said.
The answering line is the loss times the share you could catch, and you set that share. A text within seconds catches the callers who would have waited a minute; a person catches more; nothing catches everyone. No product’s recovery rate is baked in.
What the calculator does not claim. No lifetime value on the lost customer, no after-hours share, no multiple for the caller who tells their neighbour. Those are real and they are not on this page, because I could not find a number for them that you could check.
| Study | Sample | Found |
|---|---|---|
| Small business owners don’t answer 62 percent of phone calls, 411 LocalsJanuary 2016 | 85 small businesses in 58 industries, monitored for 30 days | 37.8 percent of calls answered, 37.8 to voicemail, 24.3 got nothing; 70 percent of the businesses answered fewer than half of their calls |
| The Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report, InvocaJuly 2026 | more than 70 million calls and 600 million minutes across ten industries | 56 percent of callers to businesses speak with a person; 38 percent of calls answered by a person are leads; 42 percent of those leads convert on the call |
| From conversations to conversions, CallRailJanuary 2025 | 1.1 million leads across automotive, financial services, healthcare, home services, legal and real estate | missed-call rates of 32 percent in healthcare, 28 in legal, 14 in home services and 9 in real estate |
| State of the Call, Hiya2026 | more than 12,000 consumers in six countries | 86 percent of unknown calls go unanswered: the person who reaches your voicemail screens their own phone too, and will not wait for a call from a number they do not know |
| 2026 Consumer Texting Behavior Report, EZ TextingApril 2026 | 959 US consumers | 72 percent read a business text within five minutes, and 70 percent expect a reply from a business within an hour |
The number to hold yours against is 411 Locals’, because it is the only test of small businesses and it is close to the homepage’s first symptom: the lead that came in Friday night and was seen on Monday. I hold myself to the same measure. My desk records the time from a message landing to my first reply, and the routing hub I built assigns a lead in 2.4 seconds median and reroutes an ignored one in 15 minutes.
First, a text within seconds. A missed call triggers a text with a name and a time: this is Haseeb at Norvahl, I saw your call about the garage, I will ring you at 8:15 tomorrow. One trigger, one action, no AI, an afternoon to set up on the free plan of whatever you already use. It is the first of the four things that should happen in the first five minutes, and it is the cheapest real fix on this page.
Then routing with a claim window, when more than one person could take the call. The hub on my homepage scores the crews, assigns one in 2.4 seconds median, texts the customer the crew’s name and distance, and gives the crew 15 minutes to claim it before the next crew gets the same email. Nobody has to nag.
Last, something that answers when nobody can. An inbox that drafts replies from your own pages at 11 pm, holds a slot, never invents a price, and wakes you only for a refund, a complaint or a promise. The long version is the guide on one inbox for every channel. Buy it last, not first.
Enquiries that arrive as forms are a separate count. The lead response time calculator prices the delay on the leads you do answer, and its measure mode takes last month's rows and hands back your median. Keep the two totals apart unless the phone leads and the form leads are different people, or the same job is counted twice.
Which of these to do first is half an hour of talking. Book the call: thirty minutes, free, and bring the number this page just gave you. The other calculators are on the tools page.
Whatever your job is worth, times the chance that the call was a new enquiry, times the chance it never comes back, times your close rate. No industry number can do that sum for you, because two of those four are yours. The pages that print 1,200 dollars a call, or 126,000 a year, are printing someone else’s guess at them.
Because a missed call from a supplier, a wrong number or a customer with a question costs you an apology, not a job. Invoca found 38 percent of calls answered by a person were leads across ten industries; your own share is a week of call notes away, and it is the number that most changes the result.
Nobody publishes a number you can check. The 80 and 85 percent figures on every vendor’s page trace to a blog post or sit behind a download form, so this page does not repeat them. Count last week’s voicemails and second attempts against last week’s missed calls, and type that. Hiya’s 2026 report gives the shape of the problem: 86 percent of unknown calls go unanswered, so the person you call back is screening you too.
It is what 411 Locals measured across 85 small businesses in 58 industries for a month in 2016, and it is the only test of small businesses I could find. CallRail’s 2025 rates by industry are lower: 14 percent missed in home services, 32 in healthcare. The chips carry all of them; your own phone bill carries yours, and it wins.
A text that goes out within seconds of a call you did not answer, with a name and a time: this is Haseeb at Norvahl, I saw your call about the garage, I will ring you at 8:15 tomorrow. It is one trigger and one action, needs no AI, and is the first thing I would set up before any answering service.
Not first. A text-back within seconds closes most of the gap for an afternoon’s work. Routing with a claim window comes next when more than one person could take the call. Something that answers at 11 pm comes last, and only when the calls you miss arrive when nobody is awake. The guide on one inbox for every channel is where I draw the line on what it may and may not say.
Count last month’s quotes and the jobs that came from them. Ten quotes and four jobs is 40 percent. Invoca found 42 percent of phone leads convert on the call across ten industries, which is a fair place to start, and a worse place to stop.
No, while the page’s script is running. The maths runs in your browser. The only thing that carries your numbers is the link you copy, which holds the seven fields of the form and nothing else, so that whoever opens it sees the same result. With JavaScript turned off the page still works, and then the fields do travel to my server in the address, the same way a link you copy does.
The five-minute window, what a slow reply costs, why owners miss the window even when they care, and how to reply after hours without staying up.
How fast should a small business reply to a leadFive minutes is the number the studies agree on, and almost nobody hits it by hand. What the window is, what closes it, and how a system holds it at 11 pm.Read the guide →Next step · Norvahl, one designer-engineer, both tradesTaking on projects
Tell me your calls a week and who picks up today. I read it myself and reply within a working day.
reply within a working day · me, not an assistant · a 30 minute call, free · no newsletter · hello@norvahl.com