The missed-call stats everyone quotes are fake. Here are the real ones.

Search for how many calls contractors miss and the same few numbers show up on a hundred sites. 62% of calls go unanswered. 85% of callers never call back. 78% of customers buy from whoever responds first. They appear in ads, sales decks, and blog posts, and they sound exactly like facts.

I tried to trace them to a study. I could not. Here is what I found, and here is what you can quote instead.

The numbers to retire

I could not trace any of these to a study that supports the claim.

• “62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered.” The closest thing to an origin is a 411 Locals sample of 85 businesses that counted voicemail as unanswered. Eighty-five shops is not an industry, and a voicemail count says nothing about what the caller did next.
• “85% of callers who can’t reach you won’t call back.” No study I could find.
• “80% of callers hang up without leaving a voicemail.” Same story.
• “78% of customers buy from the first business to respond.” Its cousin is “35 to 50% of sales go to the first responder.” They disagree with each other, and neither has a study behind it.
• Any “dollars lost per missed call” figure. Every one I found was a modeled example, somebody’s assumptions multiplied together. That is arithmetic, not a measurement.
• “Calls convert 10 to 15 times better than forms.” It cites BIA/Kelsey, 2015, a source that cannot be opened, so nobody can check it.

A fake number does more than fail to help. It sets the wrong expectation. If you believe 85% of missed callers are gone for good, you will plan around a problem you have not measured.

The numbers that hold up

The real data is thinner than the zombies. Most of it comes from software companies analyzing their own customers. I label it vendor data every time, because it is. It is useful and it is not neutral, and it skews toward shops that already run software. I am not recommending any of these companies. They are just the ones who published numbers.

Booking rate: ServiceTitan, 2022 (vendor data)

In October 2022, ServiceTitan published call booking data from more than 3,000 US and Canadian trade businesses on its platform, covering calls from June 2022. The typical shop booked 42% of its calls. Shops with fewer than 5 techs booked 24%. Shops with 25 or more techs booked 59%. The data does not say why the gap is that wide. Size, staffing, and who picks up the phone all travel together.^[1]

Reaching a person, then asking: Invoca, 2026 (vendor data)

In July 2026, Invoca’s Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report covered more than 70 million calls across 10 industries, all from Invoca customers. Of callers to home services businesses, 52% spoke with a person. By sub-industry that ranged from 32% to 74%. And 55% of home services businesses don’t ask leads to book. Answering is not the same as selling.^[2]

Missed leads: CallRail, 2025 (vendor data)

CallRail’s 2025 benchmark report studied 1.1 million de-identified conversations across 7 industries and found that 14% of home-services leads were missed. Compare that with the 62% you have been quoted. Do not stack it against Invoca’s 52% either. They count different things on different customers. But 14% is a number somebody actually counted.^[3]

Speed: Harvard Business Review, 2011

In 2011, Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington audited 2,241 US firms for Harvard Business Review (this link goes to a CustomerThink page covering the study). Only 37% replied to the lead within an hour. 23% never replied at all. The average reply took 42 hours. Firms that answered within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that waited one more hour, and more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or longer. This was an audit of online inquiries across many kinds of companies, not phone calls to trades, so read it as proof that speed matters, not as a number for your shop.^[4]

What to measure in your own shop

Quoted numbers cannot tell you what your phone does. Your call log can. Pull one month from your phone carrier or phone app and count three things for calls from people asking for work:

1. Calls in. Every inbound call from a new or potential customer. Skip vendors, suppliers, and wrong numbers.
2. Calls answered. Calls where a person talked to the caller. Voicemail does not count.
3. Calls booked. Calls that ended with an appointment or a scheduled estimate.

Divide answered by in, and booked by in. Those are your answer rate and your booking rate. If you can, split them into before and after 6 p.m.

Then hold yourself up against the benchmarks above, with a grain of salt. ServiceTitan’s typical shop booked 42%, but its counting rules may not match yours. Beating a benchmark matters less than knowing your own number. Nobody has measured it for you.