Free course · Lesson 1 of 7

Lesson 1: find your missed-call leak

Before you fix anything, find out how big the problem is. Today you count your calls, see when you miss them and put a rough dollar figure on it. It takes about 30 minutes with your phone in your hand.

By Umair Nawaz, Lirevon. Published October 2026. Part of the free 7-lesson course.

Key facts: finding your missed-call leak

Your answer rate is the calls you answered divided by the calls you received. Two weeks of your phone log is enough to work it out.
Invoca reports that about 27% of calls to home-service businesses go unanswered, and under 3% of those callers leave a voicemail.
Missed calls tend to cluster. For tree crews the usual clusters are work hours on the job, lunch, the drive between jobs, and evenings and weekends.
In our October 2026 check of 4,108 tree company websites, 92% gave no way to send a text, so a caller who cannot get through often has no second way in.
A rough monthly cost of missed calls is: missed calls from new customers, times the share you would book, times your average job. Every input is your own number.

Source: Lirevon, lirevon.com. Market figures come from our own October 2026 check of 6,842 tree companies in 50 US states. Quote with a link.

Why start with counting

Most owners have a feeling about missed calls. Some think they miss a few a week. Some think they miss half. The feeling is almost never the same as the number, and you cannot tell if a fix worked unless you know where you started.

There is also a reason it matters so much in tree work. A person with a tree leaning over the house is not loyal to anyone yet. They found a few names on Google and they are calling down the list. Invoca, a company that studies phone calls, reports that about 27% of calls to home-service businesses go unanswered, and that under 3% of those callers leave a voicemail. So when you miss a call, you usually do not get a message. You get a missed-call line in your log and nothing else.

That 27% is an industry-wide figure for home-service businesses, not a count of tree companies. Yours could be lower or higher. That is the point of today: replace the industry figure with your own.

Step 1: Pull two normal weeks of calls

Open the recent calls list on your phone, or the call log in your phone app or carrier account. Pick two weeks that were normal for this time of year. Skip a storm week for now; storms get their own plan in lesson 7.

If more than one phone takes business calls, such as your cell and an office line, do this for each one. Screenshots are fine. You do not need a spreadsheet, just a pen and paper.

For each call, write down three things:

Day and time. You will sort these into buckets in step 3.
Answered, returned or lost. Answered means you picked up. Returned means you called back. Lost means you never spoke to them.
Who it was, if you know. A new customer, an old customer, a supplier, family or spam.

Step 2: Count only possible customers

Cross out spam, robocalls, suppliers, your crew and your family. What is left are calls that could have been work. If you do not know who an unknown number was, keep it in. A number you do not recognize is often a new customer, and that is exactly the call you cannot afford to lose.

Now work out two numbers:

Answer rate = calls you answered ÷ all possible customer calls

Lost calls = calls you never answered and never returned

For example, and this is only an example: if you had 60 possible customer calls and answered 42, your answer rate is 42 ÷ 60, which is 70%. If 8 of the other 18 were never returned, you have 8 lost calls in two weeks. Use your own numbers, not these.

The free answer rate test does this math for you. Type in your counts and it shows your rate.

Step 3: Find when the leak happens

Put every missed call in one of four buckets. The bucket with the most calls tells you which fix to look at first in the later lessons.

Early morning (before 8 am)

Homeowners who saw a limb down on the way out the door. Often urgent and ready to book.

Work hours (8 am to 5 pm)

You are climbing, running the chipper, quoting or driving. This is usually the biggest bucket for a working owner.

Evening (after 5 pm)

People get home, look at the yard and start calling down a list of companies.

Weekend

Saturday and Sunday calls from people who spent the weekend looking at a tree that worries them.

If work hours is your biggest bucket, you need something that catches calls while you are in the tree: call forwarding to someone who will answer, a fast text back with the text-back script tool, or both. Lesson 4 covers replying fast to every lead. If evenings and weekends are biggest, plan your coverage with the after-hours coverage planner.

Step 4: Check how fast you call back

Look at the calls you returned. For ten of them, write the gap between the missed call and your call-back. Be honest. A call-back in ten minutes and a call-back the next morning are very different. By the next morning, a homeowner may have already booked someone who picked up.

Also check: did the person answer when you called back? If you often reach voicemail on the call-back, that is a sign they had already moved on. To see how much speed may matter with your own numbers, try the speed-to-lead calculator.

Step 5: Put a rough dollar figure on it

Now turn the count into money. This is an estimate, not a promise, and every input is yours.

Lost calls per month from new customers × the share of calls you usually book × your average job = rough monthly leak

Double your two-week lost calls to get a month. For the share you usually book, think about the last ten new customers who reached you: how many became jobs? For your average job, use last year's sales divided by the number of jobs, or a fair guess if you do not know.

You do not need to do this by hand. The free missed-call calculator takes these same numbers and shows the result. Keep the number you get. It is your starting point for the rest of the course.

One more thing to check while you are at it: can a customer text your business number? In our October 2026 check of 4,108 tree company websites, 92% gave no way to send a text. If yours is one of them, a caller who cannot reach you has no easy second way in. The missed calls guide explains missed-call text-back.

Your task for today

Count two weeks of calls and find your number

Go through two normal weeks of your call log. Count possible customer calls, answered calls and lost calls. Sort the misses into four time buckets. Then put your numbers into the answer rate test and the missed-call calculator. Write down three things: your answer rate, your biggest bucket and your rough monthly leak.

Checklist

Tick each one as you go. The ticks are not saved, so print the page if you want a copy.

I counted every call in my log for two normal weeks.
I marked which calls I answered, which I returned and which I never returned.
I crossed out spam, suppliers and family, and counted only possible customers.
I put each missed call in a time bucket: early, work hours, evening or weekend.
I wrote down my answer rate and my biggest bucket.
I wrote down how long my call-backs usually took.
I ran my numbers through the answer rate test or the missed-call calculator.
I saved my numbers somewhere I will find them on day 7.

Want the full background on why calls get missed and every fix compared? Read the missed calls guide. If you would rather have someone look at your setup, ask for a free audit, or see our services and pricing.