What is Missed-call rate?
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A missed-call rate is the percentage of inbound calls a business fails to answer — calls that ring out, hit voicemail or meet an engaged tone. UK clinic phone reports commonly show 15–25% of calls missed around peak times, lunch cover and after hours, and most owners underestimate their own figure until they measure it.
The measurement matters because missed calls are invisible by nature — the patient who couldn't get through doesn't appear anywhere in your day. The only honest source is your phone system: every modern system (including practice VoIP platforms) can produce an unanswered-calls report, ideally broken down by hour so you can see exactly when the leak happens.
Interpreting it for a clinic means weighting by intent: an unanswered call isn't a minor inconvenience when the caller is a new patient ready to book — it's usually a booking made somewhere else. A realistic conversion model (around 60% of answered enquiries become appointments) turns your rate into a revenue figure; the missed-call cost calculator does that arithmetic in under a minute.
- Measure: pull the unanswered-calls report for a typical fortnight, by hour.
- Locate: find the pattern — peak mornings, lunch, after close are the usual culprits.
- Value: apply your average appointment value to the missed volume.
- Fix: match the fix to the pattern — overflow cover for peaks, 24/7 answering for out-of-hours.