What is your after-hours gap costing you a year?

How the calculation works

Missed calls per week, times 52, gives missed calls per year. Multiply by the share that would have become jobs, then by your average job value. That is the annual figure. The per-call number is simply job value times conversion: what each unanswered ring is worth on average before it becomes someone else's job.

What it deliberately leaves out: the ad spend behind each call. In competitive markets a water damage restoration click costs $60 to $85 per 2026 industry data. If a paid click produced the call that rang out, that money is gone too, and it is not in the figure above.

Why the default is 6 missed calls a week

Because that is roughly what the industry baseline implies for a company getting ten after-hours calls a week. We placed real calls to 201 U.S. restoration companies outside business hours, one attempt each, and 57% reached nobody: voicemail or a line that just rang out. The full method and results are in the After-Hours Line Test. If you do not know your own miss rate, that is the honest place to start, and the fastest way to find out is to have someone call your line at 11pm on a Saturday.

What to do with the number

• If it is under what a night dispatcher would cost you, you have a rotation problem, not a staffing problem. Here is how to fix the rotation.
• If it is more, and for most companies it is, the question is which coverage to buy. The three options compared.
• Either way, the intake script is what turns an answered call into a dispatched truck.