Call handling
Everything else makes the phone ring. This is what happens next.
A plumber loses £215 every time it goes to voicemail. A builder’s problem is the opposite — four hours a week on enquiries that were never going to convert. A scaffolder’s whole month turns on one call at ten to seven. Answer faster is the wrong advice for half of them.
Every other service on this site makes the phone ring
Which makes this the one where the money is actually lost. A trade business can do everything else right, generate the enquiries, rank for the searches, and still lose most of them in the ninety seconds after the phone starts ringing — because it went to voicemail, because it was answered from a roof, or because nobody wrote down what the job was.
The scale of it surprises people. For an urgent trade, a missed call is usually a lost job, because the next name on the list answers. For a planned trade the loss is quieter and larger: enquiries that were never going to convert eat hours a week, so the ones that would have converted get less attention.
Those are opposite problems and “answer faster” only solves one of them.
What we actually do
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Work out which problem you have.
Missing calls that were worth taking, or drowning in calls that were not. The fix is different and often opposite.
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Get the calls answered.
Overflow, a service, or a routine that works from a ladder — whatever survives a real working day.
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Qualify before it reaches you.
Four questions asked by somebody else means you pick up a job rather than an enquiry.
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Capture what was said.
Job, address, urgency, budget signal — written down once, where you will find it.
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Make the callback happen.
Most lost work is not an unanswered call, it is a promised call back that nobody made.
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Measure it honestly.
Calls missed, calls converted, and what an unanswered one costs you. Most trades have never seen that number.
Answer everything is wrong advice for half these trades
A plumber loses a job every time it rings out. A builder’s problem is four hours a week on enquiries that were never real, and the answer is filtering rather than availability. A scaffolder’s month can turn on one call at ten to seven in the evening.
The trade pages below work out which you are, and what to put in place.
The first ninety days
- Weeks 1–4
Measure what is actually happening — missed, answered, and what happened next — because most estimates are wrong.
- Weeks 5–8
Answering and qualifying put in place, with the questions written for your trade.
- Weeks 9–12
Callbacks tracked to completion, and the cost of a missed call turned into a number you can act on.
What good looks like
- Calls are answered or returned the same day, every day
- You pick up a qualified job rather than an unqualified enquiry
- What was said is written down and findable
- Nobody is promised a callback that does not happen
- You know what a missed call costs you
Questions we get asked
Should I use an answering service? For urgent trades, often yes — the arithmetic is straightforward against one lost job a week. For planned work, filtering usually matters more.
Will customers know it is not me? A good service is briefed on your trade and your area. Most callers do not notice, and all of them prefer it to voicemail.
Can I just use voicemail? For urgent work it performs badly — most people ring the next name rather than leave a message.
What about out of hours? Depends on the trade. For some it is where the best jobs are; for others it is where the worst ones are.
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