Research · 5 February 2026 · 7 min read
We counted 1.2 million missed calls. Here's what they cost.
Between March and December 2025 we analysed call metadata from 900 service businesses across nine countries — with consent, and with no recording contents involved. In total, 1.2 million inbound calls went unanswered.
When the phone rings out
The intuition is that missed calls happen after hours. They don't, mostly. Sixty-one percent of unanswered calls arrived during posted opening hours, clustered in three windows:
- 08:40–09:20 — before the desk is fully staffed, and the busiest inbound window of the day
- 12:30–13:40 — lunch cover, the single worst answer rate at 44%
- 16:50–17:30 — end of day, when the desk is closing down and callers are leaving their own work
Who calls back
Of callers who reached no one and left no voicemail, 71% never contacted that business again through any channel. Of those who did try again, most did so within eleven minutes — and if that second attempt also failed, the drop-off was near total.
What it's worth
Applying each business's own average customer value and their own booking rate on answered calls, the median business in the study was losing the equivalent of 14% of annual revenue to calls that rang out. The distribution is wide: single-practitioner clinics lost the least in absolute terms and the most proportionally.
Method and limits
This is metadata from businesses that later became our customers, so it over-represents businesses that already suspected they had a problem. Treat 14% as an upper-middle estimate, not an average for all small businesses. The full method note and anonymised aggregate data are available on request at research@tryorbell.com.
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