Do the arithmetic on your unanswered phone before you buy anything.
Every AI reception pitch opens with a scary statistic about missed calls. None of them use your numbers. Here is the sum, so you can find out whether the problem is worth the fix.
Published 5 min read Sources checked 8 September 2026
Filed under Missed calls, AI reception, Lead response, Broker operations
The short answer
Take four numbers you already have: enquiries per month, the share that arrive by phone, the share of those you do not answer, and your average revenue per converted enquiry. Multiply, then apply your normal conversion rate. Most firms find the answer is either obviously worth fixing or obviously not, and either result saves you a purchase.
On this page · 8 sections
The pitch always contains a percentage. Some proportion of calls go unanswered, some proportion of those never call back, and the number on the slide is large.
It is also somebody else’s number. Here is how to get yours, which is the only one that should move money.
The four numbers
| # | Number | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Enquiries a month | CRM, or count last month by hand |
| 2 | Share arriving by phone | Phone system, or a fortnight of tallying |
| 3 | Share of those never answered and never recovered | Call log versus CRM. This is the hard one, and the one vendors inflate |
| 4 | Average revenue per converted enquiry | Last twelve months of completions ÷ enquiries converted |
The sum
(1 × 2 × 3) × your conversion rate × 4 = monthly revenue lost to the phone.
Then compare that to the annual cost of whatever you are being sold, and to the cost of a part-time person, which is the comparison the vendor would rather you did not make.
If the answer is under a few hundred pounds a month, the honest advice is: do not buy anything. Put a better voicemail on and spend the money on the thing that is actually leaking.
The number vendors quietly inflate
Number 3. Almost every missed-call statistic counts a call as lost the moment it goes unanswered, and ignores that a large share of those callers ring back, email, or were already in your pipeline under a different route.
Do not accept an industry figure here. Take one month, cross-reference the call log against the CRM, and count how many unanswered numbers never appear again. That count is your real number and it is usually a lot smaller than the slide.
What if the answer is “yes, it is expensive”?
Then scope it narrowly, and specifically:
- Answer, qualify, book, hand over. Four verbs. Not “handle enquiries”.
- Into the real diary, not a list somebody transcribes later. If it does not write to the calendar you use, it has added a step.
- A named human for anything it cannot finish, announced to the caller by name.
- Flat monthly, never per minute. Per-minute pricing makes your busiest month your most expensive one.
- Re-run the sum after ninety days. If block three did not shrink, stop paying.
Why publish the sum rather than the statistic?
Because we would rather lose the sale to arithmetic than win it with somebody else’s percentage. If your number comes out small, the correct outcome is that you do not buy AI reception from us or anybody.
What this does not tell you
Anything more accurate than the four numbers you put in, and the miss rate is the one most people guess. The sum treats every unanswered caller as lost, when some ring back, email or book online; if your call log shows repeat numbers, the real loss is lower. Revenue is not profit either, and the result is revenue.
Nor does it price the fix. A person, a rota or a system all cost something, which is why the calculator asks for the quote you are weighing and will tell you when it is not worth paying.
Questions people actually ask
How much does a missed call cost a mortgage broker?
There is no reliable industry figure, because it depends on enquiry volume, the share arriving by phone, how many missed callers never return, and your revenue per converted enquiry. Work it out from your own call log and CRM rather than accepting a vendor percentage.
Is AI reception worth it for a small brokerage?
Only if the revenue lost to unrecovered missed enquiries exceeds the annual cost, compared fairly against a part-time person. For many small firms it does not, and the honest answer is to improve voicemail and spend the money elsewhere.
Why should AI reception be priced monthly rather than per minute?
Per-minute pricing makes your busiest period your most expensive one and makes the quote impossible to compare against a receptionist’s wage, which is the comparison you are actually making.
Sources
- 01 No external source is used for the figures in this note. The illustration is explicitly illustrative, and the method is arithmetic on your own call log and CRM.
Weight: no borrowed statistics, on purpose Re-checked: never: it cannot go out of date
Checked 8 September 2026. Numbers that move (leaderboards, live indices) are re-checked every 30 days; annual datasets and rules in force every six months; dated research once a year. If something here has gone stale before we got to it, tell us and we will correct it and say what changed.
Cite this note
Noxia, “Do the arithmetic on your unanswered phone before you buy anything”, Field notes, 8 September 2026; sources checked 8 September 2026. https://www.noxia.co.uk/field-notes/what-an-unanswered-phone-costs
Do the sum first. If it is big, we will scope the four verbs.
Answer, qualify, book into your real diary, hand to a named person. Flat monthly. If your number is small, we will tell you not to buy it.