Choosing between an answering service or answerphone comes down to one thing: an answerphone adds nothing to your monthly bill, but it only catches callers who are willing to leave a message. With an answering service, a person picks up instead. The real cost of a missed call is the work behind the callers who hang up without a word, and your own call log can tell you how big that is.

Below is how to count those calls in a week, how to put a price on them without flattering the answer, and the honest cases where voicemail is all you need.

What does an answerphone actually do with a call?

It records. That is the whole job. The caller hears your greeting, and from that moment every decision is theirs: leave a message, try again later, or ring the next number on the list they just searched.

Voicemail asks a stranger to do you a favour. Someone with a dripping ceiling, a lost appointment or a question about a quote has a problem now, and the greeting tells them it will be dealt with later. Some will hold on. Some won't, and you never find out who they were, because a caller who hangs up leaves nothing behind but a missed call notification with a number you don't recognise.

Even the callers who do leave a message cost you something. You listen to it in the van once the last job is done, ring back, and get their voicemail. Two rounds of that and the job can easily have gone somewhere else, not because the other firm was better, but because they picked up.

How do you count what your answerphone is missing?

We have not found a national figure we would trust for how many callers hang up on a voicemail greeting, and we are not going to borrow a dubious one. You can get a better number than any survey from your own phone, in one week:

  1. Count the missed calls. Open your call log on Friday evening and count every missed call from a number that isn't already a contact. Leave out anything that was plainly a sales call, a scam or a wrong number. What is left are the possible new customers.
  2. Count the voicemails. Now count how many of those callers left a message.
  3. Take one from the other. The gap is roughly the people who rang you, heard your greeting and decided not to bother.
  4. Check the ones you rang back. Of the numbers you returned without a message, note how many had already sorted it elsewhere by the time you got through.

Jot the numbers in the notes app on your phone as you go, so Friday's count takes two minutes rather than twenty. Do it for a normal week, not a quiet one, and if your work is seasonal, repeat it in your busy months, because those are the months a lost caller costs you most. If the gap is zero, keep your answerphone and stop reading. If it isn't, the next section puts a price on it.

What does a missed call actually cost?

The calculator on our home page does this sum with your numbers, and it is built to come in low rather than high. It uses one set figure for each range you pick, near the middle and never the top, and assumes only 1 in 5 of the callers you missed would have booked. Here is its own worked example, a plumber missing 3 to 5 calls a week on jobs of £100 to £500:

  • The middle of 3 to 5 is 4 missed calls a week.
  • Over 52 weeks that is 208 calls.
  • 1 in 5 of them booking is 42 jobs.
  • The middle of £100 to £500 is £300 a job.
  • 42 jobs at £300 is £12,600 a year, about £1,050 a month.

Your own figures will land somewhere else, and that is the point. A builder missing one call a week on jobs over £2,000 gets a very different answer from a mobile hairdresser missing six on £40 cuts. Pick the band that matches your normal week, not your worst one.

Now the other end, because the honest version of this sum includes the cases where it is small. Someone missing 1 or 2 calls a week on jobs under £100 works out like this: the middle is 1.5 calls, which is 78 a year, 16 of which book at 1 in 5, at £75 each, the calculator's figure for jobs under £100. That is £1,200 a year, or £100 a month.

Even at that end, the work at stake is more than our cheapest plan costs, before your own costs on each job. Light is £59 a month, £708 a year, plus a one-off setup fee, from £49.50, normally £99. Light answers in business hours, so if your missed calls come in the evening, the comparison is with Growth instead. All four plans and what each includes are on the plans page.

Treat the result as an estimate, not a promise. Nobody wins back every caller. What changes is that the calls you cover reach a person.

Which calls does voicemail lose first?

Not every caller hangs up at the same rate, and the callers with the most reason to go are the ones with a choice and a hurry. Often, that is new work:

  • The emergency. A household with a leak spreading across the kitchen floor wants someone today, not a ring back this evening. They may well keep ringing until somebody picks up, and that somebody is the likeliest to get the job.
  • The first booking. Someone ringing a salon or clinic for the first time has no loyalty to you yet. If the phone goes to voicemail while you have a client in the chair, it is easy for them to try the next place. That side of it is covered in more depth under virtual receptionist for salons.
  • The new enquiry with a deadline. A customer who wants a quote this week, or a professional appointment before a date, will speak to the first firm that can give them an answer.

The callers who will happily leave a message tend to be the ones already committed to you: the regular, the customer with a question about a job you are doing, the supplier. Voicemail serves them well enough. It is the new work it quietly loses.

When is an answerphone good enough?

Voicemail is the right answer for some businesses, and paying for something you do not need is no saving at all. An answerphone is probably fine when:

  • Most of your callers already know you. A regular client rebooking or a customer chasing an invoice will leave a message and wait, because they have already chosen you.
  • You can ring back within minutes. If you are at a desk most of the day and the phone only goes to voicemail while you finish a call, the gap may genuinely be nothing.
  • Your week test came back empty. If every new caller left a message and every message became a conversation, your voicemail is doing its job.

Where it stops being enough is the emergency, the first appointment, the quote they want this week. Each of those callers is comparing you with whoever answers first, and an answerphone is how you come second.

Answering service or answerphone: what changes on the call?

With an answering service, the caller hears a person, who picks up with your company's name and the words you signed off. You keep your own number. When you are busy, it rings through to us rather than your voicemail, and on Growth and Premium that can include evenings and weekends.

What happens next is set by your plan:

  • Light and Essential take the message properly: who rang, the number to call back and what the job is, sent to you by email and SMS, with simple questions answered from your FAQs.
  • Growth books a new customer into your diary during the same call, qualifies the enquiry so you know whether it is worth a visit, or transfers the call to you when it matters. Out-of-hours options start here.
  • On Premium, the follow-up is done for you as well: ringing customers back, chasing quotes and keeping your CRM up to date.

The difference you notice is in what lands on your phone. An answerphone leaves you a recording to deal with. A person leaves you a written message with the details already taken, or a booked job. For everything a call can include, see our telephone answering service.

Can you test it before you commit?

Start with the week test above, because it tells you whether there is anything to win. If there is, the trial is 7 days, needs no card, and comes with no long contract, so the only thing you risk is a week.

Setting it up is a divert on your own phone, which you can switch off again whenever you like. The network codes are set out step by step in how to divert your mobile. Reception Hub is based in Wath upon Dearne, and a divert works the same wherever your business is, from Cornwall to Rotherham on our doorstep.

Questions before you start? Ring 01709 222834 and ask.