The missed call calculator for plumbers
These are my stories and my fixes. An AI writes them up, and I check every fact and link before a post goes up.
Tuesday morning at 8:29 I texted my plumber about a toilet that bubbles when it flushes. He read it that day and answered Wednesday at 4:14 in the afternoon. Sorry, completely forgot. By then I'd moved on, and I still haven't booked him. The first post has the thread and a working demo of what I'd set up.
You're under a house in the middle of a Tuesday with your phone in your pocket, and it rings. Or a text lands, you read it with wet hands and mean to answer from the truck. By the time you get to it, they've done what I did and moved on.
A missed call costs you nothing you can see. There's no invoice for it and no line on a report, so it feels free. The calculator below puts a number on it. Give it your average job and the calls and texts you miss in a week, then look at the year.
What I'd set up
Miss a call and plain automation texts the caller back as you inside a minute. AI answers as you from there, same as a missed text, and automation books the job off your calendar and sends you a summary.
The rules it follows
- Missed call: a text from you inside a minute.
- Texts as you, in first person. Checks your records before asking.
- Offers only open times on your calendar, then books one.
- Never quotes a price. You price the job on site.
- Flooding or a gas smell: safety steps, then straight to you.
If a customer asks whether it's a person, it says it's AI. Whoever wants you gets a call back from you, and every thread ends as a summary text to you.
Calculator
What missed calls and texts cost
Put in your own numbers and the figures below follow them.
The math runs in your browser, and nothing you type leaves this page.
An example figure. Put in what yours usually run.
Count the ones nobody got back to before they called somebody else.
What the missed ones cost
- A week
- $1,400
- A month
- $6,067
- A year
- $72,800
Rough math: every missed one counts as a booked job, 52 weeks to a year, a twelfth of that to a month. Call back from the truck and they've usually called the next plumber.
To see what answering them looks like, run the demo in the first post with your shop's name on it.
How to find your own numbers
A guess is fine to start, and last week's phone and your invoices have the numbers.
Count last week's missed calls
Open your phone's recent calls and go back one week. Count every missed call during the workday that nobody got back to right then, voicemail or not. Unknown numbers count; a new customer is one.
Then the texts
Same week, in your messages. Count every text from a customer that sat until you were back in the truck or later, and any you read and meant to get to.
Your average job, from your invoices
Add up last month's invoices and divide by how many there were. Small calls and big jobs both go in, since you don't know which one the missed call was. That figure goes in the first box.
Then stop missing them
Put both numbers in the calculator and look at the year. Then set it up so the next one gets a text back from you inside a minute. The steps are in the first post.
If you're too busy to set this up, or you'd rather not, I'll set it up on the number and calendar you already have, and you'll read what it says before a customer does.
