A missed call costs a Charlotte HVAC company more than the industry's favorite statistic admits, and that statistic is not real. The claim that 62% of home-service calls go unanswered, credited to a 2024 study of 50,000-plus contractor phone lines, appears in nearly every HVAC marketing pitch. We went looking for the study because we meant to cite it ourselves.
The most-quoted number in HVAC marketing is not what it claims to be
There is no 50,000-phone-line study. The figure traces back to a January 2016 post by a small-business marketing vendor, based on monitored inbound calls at 85 businesses spread across 58 industries. That is roughly one and a half businesses per industry, it is not HVAC-specific, and it is a decade old - which means it predates most of what has changed about how people call a contractor. Somewhere along the way the number got re-attributed to a large field-service software company, which lends it authority it never earned.
We are not telling you this to score a point. We are telling you because the underlying problem is real and the fake statistic makes it easier to dismiss. There is a better number, and it is worse.
The number that holds up
ServiceTitan published aggregate data from its own platform covering more than 3,000 trade businesses across the US and Canada in June 2022. HVAC companies booked 38% of their inbound calls. Companies with fewer than five technicians booked 24%. Companies with 25 or more technicians booked 59%.
| Segment | Booking rate | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| All trades average | 42% | Fewer than half of qualified calls become jobs |
| HVAC specifically | 38% | HVAC lags the trades average |
| Shops with 25+ techs | 59% | Scale buys dedicated call handling |
| Shops with under 5 techs | 24% | Roughly three in four qualified callers never get booked |
Two honest caveats before you use this. First, the denominator is qualified lead calls - calls that lasted at least a minute or were tagged as leads - not every ring. Calls that were never answered at all are not in the denominator, which means total leakage is worse than 38%, not better. Second, this is data from businesses sophisticated enough to be running ServiceTitan. The industry-wide number is plausibly lower.
The math on your business, not the industry's
Industry averages do not pay your payroll, so run it on your own numbers. You need four figures you already have: monthly qualified inbound calls, your booking rate, your average ticket, and the share of your jobs that turn into replacements. The exercise takes ten minutes and it usually ends an argument.
- 1Count qualified inbound calls last month - real prospects, not vendors or wrong numbers.
- 2Count how many of those ended up on the schedule. That ratio is your booking rate; most owners guess high before they check.
- 3Multiply the unbooked calls by your average job value, then separately by your replacement value, so you can see both the conservative and the real number.
- 4Split the unbooked calls by cause: never answered, answered but not booked, booked then cancelled, quoted then never followed up. Each cause has a different fix and only one of them is a phone-answering problem.
The last step is the one that matters. Owners tend to hear missed call and picture a ringing phone nobody reached. In practice the larger bucket is usually calls that were answered and still did not convert, and quotes nobody chased. Those do not get fixed by hiring an answering service.
Why it compounds in advertising, not just operations
Google's own Local Services Ads documentation states that if you regularly fail to answer calls or respond to messages, your ad ranking may be affected. That closes a loop most owners have never been shown: miss calls, rank lower, get fewer leads, and the leads you do get cost more. Call handling is not downstream of your advertising budget - it is an input to it. Which means the cheapest advertising improvement available to most HVAC shops is not a bigger budget.
What actually fixes each bucket
| What happened | Why it happened | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Call rang out | Tech was on a job; it was 9pm or a Sunday | Instant text-back and an after-hours path to the schedule |
| Answered, not booked | No slot offered, price shock, or the caller was just shopping | Same-call booking, honest price framing, follow-up sequence |
| Booked, then no-showed | Nothing reminded them | Confirmation at booking plus a reminder before the window |
| Quoted, went quiet | Nobody followed up after day one | Scheduled follow-up until you get a yes or a no |
| Old customer never returned | No re-engagement as the system aged | Interval-based outreach tied to install date |
Sources
- ServiceTitan, Data Report: Average Call Booking Rates - June 2022 platform data from more than 3,000 US and Canadian trade businesses: 42% across all trades, HVAC 38%, shops with fewer than five techs 24%, shops with 25 or more techs 59%.
- 411 Locals, SMBs Don't Answer 62% of Phone Calls (January 18, 2016) - The origin of the 62% figure: 85 businesses in 58 industries monitored for 30 days; 37.8% of calls answered, 37.8% to voicemail, 24.3% no response.
- Google Local Services Help, Getting started with Local Services Ads - States that if you regularly fail to answer calls or respond to messages, your ad ranking may be affected.
- Google Local Services Help, About ad rankings - Lists responsiveness to customer inquiries among the ranking factors; missed calls may negatively affect responsiveness.