How many jobs are London plumbers losing to missed calls?
Ask any plumber in London what their busiest day looks like and you'll hear the same thing: flat out, hands full, phone going non-stop. What you won't hear is the quiet cost underneath it the calls that rang while you were under a sink, and the jobs that walked to the next firm because of it.
So let's do the honest maths. Not scare-tactics just your own numbers.
A missed call isn't a delayed job. It's usually a lost one.
Here's the bit that makes missed calls so expensive for emergency trades specifically: the customer has a problem right now. A burst pipe. A flooded kitchen. No hot water with a baby in the house. They are not in a patient mood, and they are not going to leave a voicemail and wait for a callback.
When an emergency caller can't reach you, they don't wait they scroll down and ring the next firm on Google. Often within a minute.
That's why, for a plumber, a missed call rarely means "I'll catch them later." It usually means the job is already gone and you never even knew it existed.
The maths on a normal week
You don't need a wild assumption to see the problem. Take a modest, realistic example:
- You get around 20 calls a week.
- On a busy week you miss roughly a third you're on jobs, driving, or it's after hours.
- Say only 4 in 10 of those missed callers would actually have booked.
- Your average job is worth, conservatively, £250.
On those example figures, that's around £2,800 a month of bookable work slipping out of a normal week before you count the bigger emergency callouts. This is an illustration only; change the inputs to match your firm and the number moves, and your real figure comes from your free audit.
Run it on your own numbers with our calculator →
Why it's invisible
The reason most owners underestimate this is simple: you can't see the calls you miss. There's no angry customer in front of you, no missed-job report at the end of the month. The work just quietly goes elsewhere. The only way to know your real number is to measure it.
It's why emergency trades, more than any other business, can't afford a phone that rings out — the customer simply calls the next firm. We'll publish the recovered-revenue numbers our first London clients see on our results page soon.
What actually fixes it (and what doesn't)
Voicemail doesn't fix it most emergency callers won't leave one. A second mobile doesn't fix it you still can't answer it with your hands full. Hiring a receptionist works, but it's a big fixed cost for a small firm, and they don't work nights.
The thing that does work is catching the call automatically: the moment you miss one busy, no answer, or after hours the customer gets an instant text back in your name: "Sorry we missed you, what's the problem and your postcode? We'll get you sorted." It captures the job before they call anyone else, and books it into your diary. You stay on the tools. See exactly how it works →
And no you don't have to change your number to do it.
The bottom line
You're already paying to make the phone ring your van, your Google listing, your reviews, your years of graft. The missed calls are the leak in the bucket. Plug it, and you don't need more leads; you just keep the ones you've already earned.
Find out what your firm is really losing
A free 10-minute audit we measure your missed calls and show you the number.