Sources & methodology

Every number on this site, sourced.

We don't make up numbers. Every statistic on this site is sourced to published, third-party research — most of it primary studies measuring real call data at scale. Where data for a specific vertical doesn't exist, we say so rather than guess. Below is every claim and where it comes from.

By industry

53% of dealership leads arrive outside weekday 9am–6pm High confidence
Reconciles with NADA / BetterCarPeople (56% after hours). Average reply to an after-hours lead: 1h 38m; only 37% of dealers respond within an hour.
41% of home-services jobs booked online arrive after business hours Medium confidence
HVAC after-hours call volume can spike 5–10× during the first seasonal heat wave (ServiceTitan, State of the Trades).
5–10× after-hours HVAC call spike during the first seasonal heat wave High confidence
HVAC after-hours call share: 14.1% in June / 9.8% in October.
50%+ of powersports website inquiries go unanswered after 24 hours; only ~50% of dealers phone a web lead back High confidence
Largest research gap in the category — there is no primary source for after-hours inbound phone volume for powersports; auto is used as a labeled proxy.
52% of answered powersports service calls convert to a booked appointment High confidence
78% reached a service advisor within 1 minute; appointment-setting quality, not a miss rate.
40% of law firms actually answer the phone — down from 56% in 2019 High confidence
39% of calls went to voicemail; more than half of voicemails left with firms go unreturned within 72 hours.
51% of restaurant calls arrive after 5 PM High confidence
Maple (1.2M calls across 1,000+ locations): reservations are the largest call category; average missed reservation call ≈ $134; Friday drives ~18% of weekly call volume.
$134 average value of a single missed reservation call Medium confidence
Merchant-reported average; average missed order ≈ $85.
41% of real-estate inquiries arrive after business hours Medium confidence
NAR-attributed figures put it as high as 62%. Median after-hours response time exceeds 14 hours.
78% of buyers work with the first agent who responds Medium confidence
Phone miss in real estate is low (~9%, CallRail); the real gap is web-lead speed-to-response, not phone.

Cross-industry

10–40% of inbound calls never reach the right person, depending on vertical High confidence
Hard-miss floor among call-tracking users (more sophisticated than average, so it understates the true SMB rate). By vertical: real estate 9%, home services 14%, legal 28%, healthcare 32%.
39% of callers do not speak with a person High confidence
Only 61% of callers reach a person at all; figure includes IVR self-service, so it is an upper bound on true hard miss.
100× / 21× more likely to connect / qualify a lead when contacted within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes High confidence
A separate study from HBR below — cite individually.
7× more likely to qualify a lead when responding within 1 hour; average firm waits 42 hours and 23% never respond High confidence
A separate study from the MIT/InsideSales figure above.
71–85% of callers who reach voicemail call a competitor or never call back Medium confidence
Roughly 80–86% don't leave a voicemail at all — they hang up (Invoca/Hiya, via CallJolt). After-hours voicemail behaves as a competitive transfer event, not a queue item.
51.8% vs 44.2% after-hours conversion vs. business-hours conversion (and 15% faster to close) Medium confidence
Directional, vendor case study with disclosed methodology.
What we don't use

We deliberately do NOT use two stats you'll see elsewhere in this space: the '62% of calls go unanswered' figure (411 Locals, n=85 — too small and too old) and the '83% of inbound calls go unanswered' figure (uncorroborated). We'd rather quote a smaller, defensible number than a big, shaky one.