PlowzBox · The honest calculator

What do missed calls cost you?

Five sliders, your numbers. Where we set a default from published industry data, the source is named right on the slider. Where we guessed, the slider says so, and you should move it. The answer comes back as a range, because that is what an estimate honestly is.

Plain talk: this page runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type or slide is sent anywhere or stored anywhere. It is arithmetic, not a lead form.

A walk-behind mower parked on a lawn in low evening light
You cannot answer the phone from this seat. The math starts there.

Your numbers

Drag until it looks like your week.

Check your phone's recent-calls list before you trust our defaults. Yours beat ours every time.

your estimate
15 calls

We defaulted this to a modest 15 because we have no idea how busy your phone is. Your recents list from a normal week is the real number.

ServiceTitan, published data
20%

The default is the industry stat: about 1 in 5 weekday calls to home-service businesses goes unanswered, and roughly double that on weekends.¹ If you are on a mower eight hours a day, yours is probably higher, not lower.

your estimate
30%

Some missed calls are your supplier, your spouse, or a robocall. We defaulted to about a third being new work, on purpose a conservative guess. There is no industry stat for this; only your voicemail knows.

your estimate
$300

First-job value, not lifetime value. For context: a single weekly mowing account is worth $1,200–1,800 a year,³ so if some of your callers become recurring accounts, this slider understates what a lost call costs. We left it understated anyway.

Jobber, framed conservatively
40%

Honest framing: Jobber's data across 350,000 businesses says the fastest responder wins 60%+ of quotes.² That stat is about who answers first, not literally about missed calls, so we won't pretend it maps one to one. We defaulted below it, at 40%. Set it where your experience says.

your estimate
28 weeks

28 weeks is roughly an April-to-October mowing season. If you plow too, your phone never really has an off-season; set it to 52.

Estimated revenue at risk

$350–$600

per month, at your settings

$2,100–$3,900 over your 28-week season

15 calls a week × 20% you can't answer × 30% new work × 40% who book elsewhere × $300 a job ≈ $108 a week at risk.

We show it as a range (your result plus or minus 30%, rounded hard) because every slider above is an estimate, including ours. A single confident number would be a lie of precision.

Read this part: this estimates what missed calls put at risk. No tool recovers all of it. PlowzBox answers the text-back and speed-to-lead part; the rest is still your reputation and your prices.
Request a demo How the text-back works

Show your work

Our assumptions vs. yours.

Every default, where it came from, and what you changed it to. If a row has no source, it is a labeled guess and your number wins.

Input Our default Yours right now

The formula, in full: calls × can't-answer share × new-work share × booked-elsewhere share × job value = weekly risk. Month = weekly × 4.33. Season = weekly × your weeks. Band = ±30%.

Sources

Where the two cited defaults come from.

Only two numbers on this page came from us, and both are somebody else's published research. Everything else you set yourself.

  1. ServiceTitan, published data. Roughly one in five weekday calls to home-service businesses goes unanswered, about twice that on weekends. Used as the default for the "share of calls you can't answer" slider.
  2. Jobber, across 350,000 field-service businesses. Only about 20% of pros respond to a new request within the hour, and the fastest responders win 60%+ of quotes. Used to anchor, conservatively and with the caveat stated on the slider, the "book elsewhere" default of 40%.
  3. Per-account annual value. One weekly mowing account is worth $1,200–1,800 a year. Shown as context next to the job-value slider; not used in the math unless you drag the slider there yourself.
  4. Housecall Pro, survey of 1,040 homeowners. Most service frustrations are about communication, not work quality. Context for why missed calls matter; not used in the math at all.

Not in this calculator: any PlowzBox recovery rate. We do not have a verified number for how much of this a text-back wins back, so there is no such number in the math, on this page, or anywhere else on this site. When we have one we can prove, we will publish it with its source, like everything above.

Want the longer read on the problem? The guide to stopping missed-call leakage, or see what PlowzBox actually does about it.