How many calls is your HVAC or plumbing shop really missing?

That’s the best-sourced missed-call figure for HVAC and plumbing during business hours, with more missed on nights and weekends, and a long way from the “62% of calls go unanswered” line on vendor pages. Better still, thirty days of your own call log will give you your shop’s number. Here’s how to count it, and what to buy if it shows a gap.

Where the big numbers come from

We haven’t found a study behind the 62%. One page credits a 2024 ServiceTitan analysis, another small business in general; the most careful page treats it as the premise of its own product (SkipCalls).

The other line, that 85% of callers who hit voicemail never call back, travels the same way, vendor page citing vendor page (Hyperleap). Missed calls do cost you work. The sourced numbers make the case well enough on their own.

What the sourced numbers show

CallRail tracks calls for businesses that advertise. Its benchmark comes to us secondhand, from a page that read the report, and it’s still the largest sample anyone can point to.

• 411 Locals called 85 businesses over 30 days: a person answered 37.8%, 37.8% went to voicemail and 24.3% got no answer. Small and not trades-specific (411 Locals via SchedulingKit).
• CallJolt, an answering-service vendor, says contractors miss 26% of calls on weekdays and 41% on weekends. The vendor’s own figure, useful for the shape of the problem (CallJolt).

Count your own in thirty days

Your phone system or carrier already keeps the log. No software needed.

Then put three numbers in the calculator: calls a month, the share unanswered and your average first-visit ticket. It counts one missed call in five as a new job you’d have booked and shows the payback on the $1,500 base build. Your own list may say a different share.

Choosing an AI receptionist

ServiceTitan’s “AI in the Skilled Trades” report, out December 16, surveyed more than 1,000 contractors: 46% use or are testing AI, 72% call it relevant, and of those using it, 59% took features built into software they already run. ServiceTitan notes the sample isn’t representative (ServiceTitan, ACHR News).

So start with your field-service software. Jobber, Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan each shipped a receptionist in August 2025. Jobber’s answers around the clock, asks your intake questions, books and transfers. Housecall Pro’s is an add-on with your hours, tone and booking rules; ServiceTitan’s is a separate Pro product. Neither publishes a price (The AI Trades). Jobber’s price varies by page, so ask Jobber. Independent answering services list at around $297 a month (GetLocalCall). Set either against your count.

What it handles, what it hands off

Think of a steady night dispatcher who has read your intake sheet: great at the first three minutes. In ServiceTitan’s playbook an after-hours voice agent books a furnace call that becomes a $1,060 ticket, a vendor’s best case but a fair picture (ServiceTitan playbook). Text-back itself is a plain rule, the kind sorted out in last month’s piece.

Price and diagnosis stay with your techs, because a quoted number is a promise and a diagnosis carries your license. Every line in the right-hand column is your rule, set before it goes live.

A person, one word away

In a Gartner survey of 5,728 consumers, 64% said they’d prefer companies not use AI in customer service, and the top reason was trouble reaching a person (Gartner, December 2023). So we design the exit before the greeting.

• Say what it is. The greeting names the shop and says an assistant is taking the details.
• “Person”, “human” or “someone” transfers during the day and rings the on-call tech after hours. If nobody picks up, the caller gets a text with the dispatcher’s name and when they’ll hear back.
• Emergency words skip the script. Gas, smoke, flooding, sewage, or no heat or cooling with a medical condition in the house dial the on-call line.
• Every call lands in your software as a transcript, summary and booking. Read every one for two weeks, then skim weekly.
• Your dispatcher stays. The assistant takes the 7 a.m. voicemail pile and the Saturday calls off someone who already has a full day.

Your own log will tell you more than any page selling a receptionist, this one included. Start the count this week.