A Monday Review of Last Week's Missed Calls
Most trade firms know they miss calls. Fewer know which ones, how many were answered afterwards, and which people are still waiting. A short review at the start of each week fixes that without any new software or a big change to how you work.
The review takes about ten minutes. Do it with a coffee before the first job, or in the van before you set off.
Gather the list in one place
Open your phone's call history and scroll back over the last seven days. Pick out every call you did not answer. Write each one on a single sheet or in a simple spreadsheet. A notebook is fine.
For each missed call, note:
- The name or number.
- The day and roughly what time it came in.
- Whether you replied, and when.
- What happened next, if anything.
If you already keep a log of enquiries, add to it rather than starting another one.
Sort them into three piles
Go down the list and give each line one of three marks.
Done. You spoke to them, they booked, or they said no thanks. Nothing more to do.
Waiting on them. You replied and they have not come back. Check whether you have already made your second contact. If not, decide today whether to make it.
Never answered. Nobody replied to this call at all. These are the ones that matter most on a Monday.
Decide what to do with the unanswered ones
For anything in the third pile, a message is better than silence, even if the call came in days ago. Keep it short: your business name, an apology for missing them, and one clear question such as what the job is or the postcode. Skip the price list and the long introduction.
The guidance on following up a missed enquiry makes the point that an enquiry is usually lost in the hour after the call, when nothing happens. A message sent days later will not always win the job, but it costs you a minute and sometimes restarts a conversation.
If a number looks like a sales call or a wrong number, cross it off and move on. Not every missed call is an enquiry.
Check your second contact
For the people in the "waiting on them" pile, a simple pattern works: if there is no answer to your text, ring once at a sensible time on the same day and leave a short message with your name and number. One more text the next day is enough. Beyond that, chasing tends to annoy people, so mark them closed and let them go.
On Monday, you are just checking that this happened. If it did not, send it now or close the line.
Look for patterns
Once you have a few weeks of lists, patterns start to show. You might notice that most misses fall in the same part of the day, such as when you are on a roof or under a sink. You might see that replies go out quickly on quiet days and slowly on busy ones.
That tells you where the gap is. If the delay is always when you are on the tools, you could send the first message yourself the moment you come off them, or look at a missed call text back service, which sends the first text for you as soon as a call goes unanswered and passes the reply to you. Either way, you are choosing based on your own list rather than guessing.
Count what turned into work
At the bottom of the sheet, jot down how many of the week's missed calls led to a conversation and how many led to a quote. Do not worry about the exact figure. After a month, the trend tells you whether your follow-up is working.
Keep it small enough to repeat
The value of this habit is that you actually do it. Put a fixed slot in your week, keep the sheet somewhere you will find it, and stop when the list is clear. If a Monday gets swallowed by an emergency, do it on Tuesday rather than skipping it. A rough list kept every week beats a perfect system you drop after a fortnight.