Published 8 August 2026 · Latitude Global Solutions
For a three-truck shop, usually 30 to 60 jobs a month. At 15 calls a day, 30% missed, a 45% close rate and a $450 HVAC ticket, that's about $27,000 a month — roughly $328,000 a year.
Halve every assumption and it's still around $13,500 a month.
The fix is $297 a month, and one recovered job covers it. The rest is margin.
For a shop that size the honest answer is usually somewhere between 30 and 60 jobs a month — and the reason it's a range is that nobody counts the calls they never heard.
It answers the calls you miss — nights, weekends, mid-job — books the job during the call, and shows you every call afterwards in plain English. Not a message service: it takes the name, number, address and the actual problem, then puts the appointment on your calendar.
$297/month · 1,500 minutes included · overage $0.25/min · no contract
The demo line answers as the front desk of Summit Plumbing & Drain, a fictional Denver shop — it's the same software that would go on your line.
A three-truck shop typically fields 12 to 20 calls a day. Taking the middle at 15:
| Step | Number |
|---|---|
| Calls per day | 15 |
| Share unanswered | 30% |
| Missed calls per month (15 × 30 × 0.30) | 135 |
| Close rate on calls you do answer | 45% |
| Jobs never quoted (135 × 0.45) | ~61 |
| Average HVAC ticket | $450 |
| Lost revenue per month | ~$27,000 |
| Per year | ~$328,000 |
That number is large enough to be uncomfortable, so halve every assumption: 15% missed instead of 30%. It's still around $13,500 a month. The conclusion doesn't depend on the optimism of the inputs.
Two things compound. HVAC tickets are bigger than most trades, so each lost job costs more. And HVAC demand is weather-driven — the calls arrive on the first freezing night and the first real heatwave.
Which means your phone rings hardest on exactly the day every truck is already booked and nobody is anywhere near the office. Your worst coverage and your highest demand are the same event. That's not a staffing problem you can solve by hiring one person.
Mostly not, though be sceptical of any precise figure you see. Published claims run from 67% to 90% of callers hanging up without leaving a message, and nearly every one traces back to a company selling call-answering software. The two named primary sources are BIA/Kelsey at 67% and Invoca at 86%.
The practical version doesn't need a statistic: someone whose furnace died in January is not waiting for a callback. They're already dialling the next company.
Call your own line from a number your team won't recognise. Do it four times — mid-morning, just after five, during dinner, and on a Saturday. Write down what happened each time.
Four calls gives you a real percentage instead of our 30%. Put that in the calculator and the output is yours, not an industry average you can argue with.
Set up on your existing number within 24 hours. 30 days — if you're not happy, you don't pay. No minimum call volume, no hoops. If we haven't booked you at least five jobs, just let us know you aren't satisfied and we'll refund everything you've paid — and you keep every booking it made.
The demo line answers as the front desk of Summit Plumbing & Drain, a fictional Denver shop — it's the same software that would go on your line.