What a missed call costs a tradie

You're on a roof, under a house, halfway through a pour, or at your kid's swimming carnival. The phone goes in your pocket. By the time your hands are free it's a missed call and no voicemail, because most people don't leave one. They hang up and ring the next name on the list.

For us it wasn't one particular missed call. It was the constant waiting for the phone to ring, and feeling permanently on call. We run a mobile locksmith business in Brisbane, and we decided we didn't want to answer every call ourselves any more. We wanted callers looked after without our whole day revolving around the phone.

That caller wasn't browsing. People don't ring a plumber at 7:40am for fun. They had a problem, money to fix it, and a list. You were simply the name that didn't pick up.

We don't have a national statistic for this and we won't invent one. What we have is our own locksmith line in Brisbane, answered by Giday, measured between 30 July and 22 August 2026:

One line, one month, stated as what it is. If your trade runs differently, your numbers will too. But the shape holds: a fifth of the people who want you are ringing when you can't answer.

Take your own figures, not ours:

1. How many calls a week do you miss? Check your phone's recent-calls list for a week and count the ones with no voicemail.
2. What's a typical job worth to you? Not the big one, the ordinary one.
3. What share of callers would have booked if someone had answered? Be hard on yourself here. Half is probably generous. A third is closer.

Missed calls × share that would have booked × ordinary job = what voicemail costs you a week.

Our own version, for what it's worth: during the measured month we received at least nine genuine calls a day, not counting spam and telemarketers, and diverted all of them to our receptionist. Every enquiry that needed a job with our business was booked, and every booked job was completed. We measure the revenue internally and we're keeping those figures private — and we won't invent a dollar value for the calls we used to miss. Do the sum with your numbers. It was more than the monthly cost of answering, by a long way.

• Answer everything yourself. Then you're quoting drainage from the top of a ladder, and the customer in front of you watches you take someone else's call.
• Rope in family or the office. Someone's day is gone, and the booking still has to get into your calendar from a scrap of paper.
• A human answering service. The big ones charge $2.60–$4.00 a call just to take a message, by their published rates when we checked on 24 August 2026, with diary booking sold separately at around $2.99 a minute. You still ring the customer back, after they've booked someone else. The full working is in what an answering service costs.
• Voicemail. See above.

A receptionist that answers in a friendly Australian voice, in your business's name, on a recorded line. It knows your services and your hours. It sees your calendar and offers your next real slot. It books the job, texts the customer a confirmation and texts you what happened. On the plans that include it, it quotes from your own price list. If someone wants a human, it puts them through to you or takes a priority message. It never pretends to be a person: ask, and it says so.

That's it. Not a message pad with a nicer voice. The job, in your calendar, while you're on the tools. The whole of it is on the virtual receptionist page, and the trade version on tradies.

Giday is not an emergency service and it doesn't claim to make a human unnecessary. Some calls should come to you, and you can set which ones do. What it does is stop the fifth of your callers who ring when you can't answer from ringing someone else.

What it gave us is harder to put a number on: freedom. Our receptionist has been taught the answers to the usual questions — you know the ones, the ones only the business owner has heard a thousand times. It knows what we'd say and it says it for us, and only what we've taught it: your receptionist knows nothing you haven't told it. We loaded ours with everything we could think of, and that is what gave us the confidence to let it take the phone all the time, not just after hours. Anyone who wants a human just asks and is put straight through. It never complains and never calls in sick. Magical is the word we keep using.

From $49 a month including GST, no setup fee, no lock-in, and the first week is free: 60 minutes of call time on us, card up front, nothing charged unless you keep it. The plans, and how the after-hours side works.