Do Customers Leave Voicemails Anymore?

A lot of them don't. When someone calls a trade and gets voicemail, plenty of people hang up without leaving a message and call the next number on their list. You never find out they called, unless you go digging through missed calls at the end of the day.

Why do people skip the message?

When something's broken at home, people aren't calling to start a conversation. They want to know if someone can come. A voicemail feels like a maybe and the next company might pick up, so leaving a message feels like a waste of their time.

And the people who do leave one usually keep calling around while they wait. By the time you call back after the job, a lot of them have already booked whoever answered.

The calls you don't know you missed

Most owners think about missed calls as the ones with a voicemail waiting. The bigger number is the hang-ups. A missed call from a number you don't know, with no message, looks like spam, so it never gets called back, and some of those were real jobs.

What actually works

You can't answer every call when you're on a roof or under a sink, and you shouldn't have to. What works is making sure the person hears from you fast even when you can't pick up, so they stop calling around. That can be someone answering for you, or a text that goes out the second a call is missed letting them know you got it and when you'll call back.

What matters is that the customer hears from you before they hear from someone else.

One thing to try this week

Count the hang-ups.

1. Open your phone's recent calls and look at the last week.
2. Count the missed calls from numbers you don't know that didn't leave a voicemail.
3. Call or text three of them back and ask if they still need help.

How many missed calls from strangers did you never call back last week?