The cost of a missed enquiry isn't the enquiry. It's the customer, the review, and the two neighbours they'd have told about you.
Every plumber, sparky, roofer and salon owner has felt it. The phone goes while your hands are full, you tell yourself you'll ring back tonight, and by tonight it's slipped your mind or the moment's passed. It feels like a small miss. It almost never is.
Most people who message you don't wait
When someone needs a trade, they're rarely browsing. The tap's dripping, the fuse board's tripped, the wedding's Saturday. They message you, and while they wait they message the next name on the list too. Whoever answers first — clearly, calmly, and quickly — usually gets the job. The rest never hear back. There's no voicemail, no second chance, no "sorry I missed you" that lands. They've already booked.
That's the part owners underestimate. A missed enquiry isn't a job sitting in a queue for later. In most cases it's simply gone the moment someone else replied.
The leak compounds
One missed job in a week is easy to shrug off. The problem is it isn't one week. Miss a couple every week and it runs all year, quietly, in the background. It never shows up as a bad day — it shows up as a business that's always a bit busier than it is profitable, and an owner who can't work out why the diary has gaps.
And it's not only the job value. The customer you missed would have left a review, come back next year, and passed your number to a neighbour. Speed of reply doesn't just win one job. It compounds into the reputation that wins the next ten.
Work out your own leak
Don't take anyone's figures — including ours. Use your own. The table below is illustrative only; your real numbers will differ depending on your trade, your average job and how many enquiries you actually miss. Find the row closest to you, or run your own maths in your head.
| Missed enquiries / week | Avg job value | Lost / week | Lost / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | £150 | £450 | £1,800 |
| 5 | £200 | £1,000 | £4,000 |
| 8 | £250 | £2,000 | £8,000 |
These are example figures to show the shape of the maths, not a claim about your business. Even the smallest row here is a number most owners would rather not hand to a competitor every month. And it's usually an undercount, because it only counts the first job — not the repeat work or the referrals that came with it.
Speed is the lever, and it's mostly evenings
Of everything you could change — your pricing, your van, your website — the one that moves the needle most is how fast someone gets a real reply. A calm, clear answer in the first few minutes is what keeps an enquiry from wandering off to the next firm.
Here's the catch: the enquiries you miss aren't spread evenly. They land when you can't answer — evenings, weekends, mid-job, up a ladder, driving between sites. That's exactly when a customer with a problem is sitting at home deciding who to message. Miss that window and you're not competing on price or quality. You're just not in the running.
You can't be on the phone at 9pm on a Tuesday. That's fine. What matters is that something answers, takes the details properly, and holds the customer's attention until you can pick it up in the morning.
That's the whole job Dobbie does. It answers your business WhatsApp the second it pings — evenings, weekends, mid-job — takes the customer's name, the job and how urgent, and hands you the lead. £79/month, with a 5-day free trial and no card to start.
Message it like a customer and watch it work. Or see the full pricing.