You’re under a kitchen sink in Glenora with your hands full. Your phone buzzes three times in twenty minutes. At lunch you check it: three missed calls and no voicemails.

You call them back. One already booked with another plumber. One doesn’t pick up. The third just wanted a quote for next month.

That morning cost you a job, and you only know because you called back.

What the data says

In November 2026, Quo published a review of more than 18 million missed calls made through its platform from July to September. Only 15% of callers left a voicemail. For home service businesses the rate was 16%, and after hours it fell to 14% (Quo).

Quo also found that 69% of missed calls didn’t get a callback within 48 hours (Quo). That’s vendor data from a company that sells phone tools, so read it with that in mind. The direction is hard to argue with.

Speed beats the callback

A Harvard Business Review study of web leads found that companies that replied within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with the lead as those that waited longer (Harvard Business Review). That research is about online forms, and it’s from 2011. Phone callers tend to be less patient. Someone with water on the floor won’t wait an hour.

Why people skip the voicemail

Leaving a message means waiting and hoping. Calling the next number on Google takes ten seconds. On an urgent job, the caller picks the faster option, and that’s usually your competitor.

There’s a quieter cost too. A caller who hangs up never shows up in your books as a lost job. At most you see a missed call.

Fixes, from cheapest to best

• Text back every missed call within a few minutes. It beats nothing, though many people will have booked elsewhere by then.

• Have someone in the office answer during the day, and forward calls to them when you’re on a job.

• Use a live answering service that knows plumbing calls and can book into your calendar, day and night.

Where we come in

Dispatch North is a live answering desk built for Edmonton plumbing and heating shops. A real person answers in your company’s name, books the job into the slots you’ve set and sends you a summary. Emergencies reach your on-call tech within 10 minutes.

If you’re counting missed calls at lunch, book a short call and we’ll show you what your line would sound like.

Sources

1. Quo, missed call and voicemail data from 18M+ calls, July to September 2026 (published November 2, 2026)

2. Harvard Business Review, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” (March 2011)