---
title: "After-Hours Call Statistics: The Cost of Unanswered HVAC Calls"
url: "https://fieldcamp.ai/ai-receptionist/after-hours-call-statistics/"
date: "2026-09-29T13:00:00+00:00"
modified: "2026-10-01T05:04:05+00:00"
type: "WebPage"
resource: "https://fieldcamp.ai/ai-receptionist/after-hours-call-statistics/"
timestamp: "2026-10-01T05:04:05+00:00"
author:
  name: "Komal Gurbani"
word_count: 3257
reading_time: "17 min read"
summary: "After-hours call statistics for HVAC and plumbing shops, each traced to its source, plus a worksheet to cost your own unanswered after-hours calls."
description: "After-hours call statistics for HVAC and plumbing shops, each traced to its source, plus a worksheet to cost your own unanswered after-hours calls."
keywords: "after-hours call statistics, how much revenue do hvac shops lose from unanswered after hours calls"
language: "en"
schema_type: "WebPage"
---

# After-Hours Call Statistics: The Cost of Unanswered HVAC Calls

_Published: September 29, 2026_  
_Author: Komal Gurbani_  

![After-Hours Call Statistics: The Cost of Unanswered HVAC Calls](https://cms.fieldcamp.ai/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/after-hours-call-statistics-featured-1024x538.webp)

> After-hours call statistics for HVAC and plumbing shops, each traced to its source, plus a worksheet to cost your own unanswered after-hours calls.

It’s 7:40 on a July evening. The office closed at five. A homeowner with a warm house and a dead condenser calls, hears voicemail, and opens the next search result. Whether that call was a capacitor or a full system replacement, you won’t find out.

This page collects the after-hours numbers that trace back to an original study, with the year and the sample for each, plus a worksheet that turns them into an estimate for your own shop. If you’re weighing coverage, [FieldCamp AI Receptionist for after-hours and overflow calls](/ai-receptionist/) is one option, and it’s covered near the end. So are the popular statistics we left out, and why.

## How much revenue do HVAC shops lose from unanswered after-hours calls?

No published study puts a dollar figure on it, so any single number you see is someone’s arithmetic. The research shows the inputs instead: 9.8% to 14.1% of residential HVAC calls arrive after hours, HVAC calls book at 38%, and 78% of consumers have abandoned a business after an unanswered call. Your number comes from your own call log.

Those figures come from ServiceTitan’s 2025 platform data (the after-hours share), its 2022 data report (the booking rate) and CallRail’s 2025 consumer survey. Multiply your own after-hours calls, missed share, booking rate and average ticket, and you have an estimate built on your shop instead of someone else’s.

[Jump to the worksheet ↓](#how-to-work-out-your-own-after-hours-revenue-loss)

## The short answer: why there’s no honest single dollar figure

The confident numbers you’ll find, like $126,000 a year, don’t come from a study of HVAC shops. They come from a formula with assumed inputs. The formula itself is sound:

**Revenue at risk = after-hours calls × share that go unanswered × booking rate × average ticket**

Three inputs have primary research behind them. The fourth only your invoices know.

| Input | What the research shows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Share of HVAC calls outside business hours | 9.8% (October) to 14.1% (June) | ServiceTitan State of the Trades, 2025 platform data |
| Booking rate on inbound calls | HVAC 38%, plumbing 43%, all trades 42% | ServiceTitan data report, 2022 |
| What callers do when nobody answers | 78% have abandoned a business after an unanswered call | CallRail consumer survey, 2025 |
| Average ticket | Your own number | Your invoices |

The missing input, the share of after-hours calls that go unanswered, varies most from shop to shop, and your phone system can tell you.

Free worksheet

### Put your own figure on the calls you miss

A two-page missed-call cost worksheet: four numbers from your phone log, your schedule and your invoices, multiplied out in boxes anyone can check, then split into after-hours, daytime and peak-season rows so you can see which window costs the most.

## How many HVAC calls come in after hours?

The best public dataset is [ServiceTitan’s State of the Trades analysis of residential HVAC calls](https://www.servicetitan.com/toolbox/state-of-the-trades/trends/hvac-summer-after-hours-call-spike), published in June 2026. It uses 2025 inbound call data from residential HVAC contractors on the ServiceTitan platform and defines business hours as Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in each contractor’s local time. Everything outside that window counts as off-hours.

- **All off-hours calls:** 14.1% of inbound calls at the June peak and 9.8% at the October low, a relative rise of about 45%.
- **Weekday evenings and early mornings:** 9.3% of calls in June, against 6.8% in October.
- **Weekends:** 4.9% of calls in August, against 2.95% in October.
- **Time of day:** off-hours calls cluster between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time, with a smaller rise from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. in the summer months.

![Bar chart of the after-hours share of residential HVAC calls: 9.8% in October vs 14.1% in June overall, 6.8% vs 9.3% on weekday evenings, 2.95% vs 4.9% on weekends, with calls clustering 5 to 9 p.m.](https://cms.fieldcamp.ai/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/after-hours-hvac-call-share-by-month-servicetitan.webp)Off-hours share of residential HVAC calls at each measure’s low and peak month. Source: ServiceTitan State of the Trades, 2025 data.Two caveats. The data covers ServiceTitan customers, so it isn’t a national sample, and ServiceTitan says it doesn’t establish a causal link to any business outcome. It also measures share, not count: if your total volume climbs in June too, your after-hours count climbs faster than the percentage.

So how many is that per week? Multiply your weekly inbound calls by 0.098 for a quiet month and 0.141 for a peak month. Your own call log is the better answer.

We didn’t find a comparable public dataset for plumbing. Many of the calls in the evening window are the ones that can’t wait until morning, and [how overnight emergency calls get triaged and dispatched](/ai-receptionist/overnight-emergency-calls/) is a topic of its own.

Angle · Seasons

### The after-hours share moves with the calendar. Plan coverage by month

If about 1 in 10 calls arrive after hours in October and about 1 in 7 in June, one coverage setting for the whole year is either too much or too little. The 12-month coverage planner puts the holidays and your trade’s hard weeks on one page, with a coverage choice and an on-call lead for each month.

## How many after-hours calls go unanswered?

No public study measures the unanswered rate for after-hours calls alone. The closest data covers home services calls at any hour, and the sources measure different things.

| Source | What it measured | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| [Invoca platform data, published May 2024](https://www.invoca.com/blog/how-much-missed-sales-calls-cost-home-services-businesses) | Calls to home services businesses that were not answered | 27% |
| [Invoca Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report, July 2026](https://www.invoca.com/reports/the-invoca-home-services-lead-conversion-benchmarks-report-2026) | Callers to home services businesses who spoke with a person | 52% |
| [CallRail report, From Conversations to Conversions, January 2025](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250114793850/en/CallRail-Releases-Report-Benchmarking-Marketing-Efforts-for-Small-Businesses) | Missed-call rate for home services leads (1.1 million leads across industries) | 14% |

The spread runs from 14% missed to 48% not reaching a person, depending on whose customers are counted and whether “answered” means a person picked up. Invoca’s 2026 report, drawn from a platform dataset of more than 70 million calls, counts callers who spoke with a person, so the other 48% didn’t, whether they hit voicemail, a menu or no answer at all.

None of these split daytime from after-hours calls. If your nights go to voicemail, your call log shows the real share. Daytime misses count too: when every CSR is on a line, the next caller waits, and [how overflow calls reach a voice agent](/ai-receptionist/overflow-calls/) covers that path.

## What callers do when nobody picks up

The most-quoted number here, “85% of callers won’t call back”, has no study behind it (more on that below). The best current data is [CallRail’s 2025 survey of 1,000 US consumers](https://www.callrail.com/blog/missed-calls-cost-businesses-more-than-ever):

- **78%** have abandoned a business after an unanswered call.
- **42%** say they leave a voicemail when a business doesn’t answer.
- **24%** turn to online chat.
- **21%** immediately call another business.

![Infographic of CallRail survey data: 78% of consumers have abandoned a business after an unanswered call; 42% leave a voicemail, 24% turn to chat, 21% immediately call another business; 41% hang up after 1 to 2 minutes on hold](https://cms.fieldcamp.ai/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/what-callers-do-when-a-business-doesnt-answer-callrail.webp)What consumers say they do when a business doesn’t answer. Sources: CallRail consumer survey, 2025; Invoca platform data, 2024.Hold time matters as well. In the same survey, 41% said they hang up after one to two minutes on hold, 30% wait three to five minutes, and 18% wait longer than five.

The voicemail number needs care. Invoca’s 2024 platform data found fewer than 3% of callers pushed to voicemail actually left one. Recorded behaviour is a safer planning guide than a survey answer, and [turning missed calls into booked jobs](/ai-receptionist/missed-calls/) covers the recovery side.

Callers are also open to talking to software. In the CallRail survey, 52% said companies that use AI assistants after hours provide superior service, and 50% said they would use AI to book an appointment.

## How to work out your own after-hours revenue loss

This worksheet is the honest version of the “$X a year” figure. Run it twice, once for your busiest month and once for your quietest, because the after-hours share moves with the season.

| Line | What to enter | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| A | Inbound calls in the month | Your phone provider’s call log |
| B | Share that arrived outside business hours | Your log, or the HVAC reference range of 9.8% to 14.1% (ServiceTitan data) |
| C | After-hours calls | A × B |
| D | Share of those that weren’t answered | Your log: calls that rang out or reached voicemail |
| E | Unanswered after-hours calls | C × D |
| F | Callers you reached and booked on a callback | Your callback records |
| G | Calls still lost | E − F |
| H | Booking rate | Your CSR booking rate, or HVAC 38% and plumbing 43% (ServiceTitan data) |
| I | Average ticket for after-hours jobs | Your invoices, at your after-hours rate |
| **Result** | **Revenue at risk this month** | **G × H × I** |

![Fill-in worksheet for after-hours revenue at risk: inbound calls times after-hours share, times share not answered, minus callbacks won back, times booking rate, times average after-hours ticket](https://cms.fieldcamp.ai/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/after-hours-revenue-at-risk-worksheet.webp)The worksheet as a fill-in sheet. Reference values: ServiceTitan State of the Trades (2025 data) and Average Call Booking Rates (2022).A few notes on reading the result:

- **It’s revenue at risk, not a measured loss.** The worksheet assumes the callers you missed would have booked at your normal rate.
- **Evening booking rates run lower.** ServiceTitan’s 2022 report found booking rates fell after 6 p.m., so a daytime rate can overstate the night. Use your evening rate if you track it.
- **Keep lifetime value out.** A missed first call can cost a maintenance agreement too, but no primary data says how often.

The ROI of after-hours coverage is this result minus what the coverage costs (see the cost section below). Trade-specific setup lives on the [HVAC AI receptionist](/hvac-software/ai-receptionist/) and [plumbing AI receptionist](/plumbing-software/ai-receptionist/) pages.

Angle · Worksheet

### One average hides the window that costs you most

The missed-call cost worksheet runs the same arithmetic three times: nights and weekends, daytime when your CSRs are busy, and peak weeks such as a heat wave or a freeze. Keep the working on the sheet, circle any guessed number, and replace it once you have a real count.

## Why after-hours calls book at lower rates, and what changes that

ServiceTitan’s [2022 data report on call booking rates](https://www.servicetitan.com/blog/data-call-booking-rates), drawn from more than 3,000 trade businesses in the US and Canada, put the average booking rate at 42%: plumbing 43%, electrical 41% and HVAC 38%. It also found booking rates fell after 6 p.m.

The report doesn’t say why. The usual after-hours setup suggests reasons: whoever answers can’t see the schedule, the caller gets a message-taker instead of a time slot, and the callback comes next morning.

Speed is the other factor. In a [2011 Harvard Business Review study](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads) that audited 2,241 US companies, firms that contacted an online lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited even an hour longer. Only 37% responded within an hour, and the average response time was 42 hours. It measured web leads, not phone calls, so treat it as a signal, not a phone benchmark.

What changes the after-hours booking rate is an answer instead of a recording: something that says what happens next, captures the details, and escalates the emergency or sets up the visit. This short FieldCamp video walks through setting up an AI answering service that keeps working after the call ends.

How to Set Up an AI Answering Service That Works After the Call | FieldCamp

### Walk one of your own after-hours calls through FieldCamp

Bring a real scenario from your call log. We’ll show it answered by FieldCamp AI Receptionist, triaged on your rules, and handed off or captured for the morning.

[Book a demo](https://calendly.com/jeel-fieldcamp/30min)

## Answering service vs. a night receptionist: what the cost structure looks like

Using ServiceTitan’s definition of business hours, Monday to Friday from 8 to 5, a week has 45 business hours and 123 off-hours. Staffing every one of those hours with a person is where the cost comes from.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the [median receptionist wage at $18.27 an hour](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/receptionists.htm) in its May 2025 data. At that rate, 123 hours comes to about $2,250 a week, or roughly $117,000 a year, in wages alone. That’s before payroll taxes, benefits, premiums and cover for sick days, and it takes several people to fill those shifts.

**Shift cost**A person on every off-hours shift: 123 hours a week paid, whether the phone rings or not.

**Usage cost**An answering service or AI receptionist: charged per minute, per call or by allowance, so the bill follows your call volume.

An answering service or an AI receptionist swaps the fixed shift cost for a usage cost. These are the pricing models you’ll meet:

| Pricing model | How it’s charged | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Per minute | Talk time, sometimes rounded up per call | Rounding rules, and whether hold and transfer time count |
| Per call | Each answered call | What counts as a call: spam, hang-ups, wrong numbers |
| Monthly allowance | A set number of calls or minutes | What happens at the limit: overage fees, or a pause |
| Add-on to your software plan | Tied to your field service software subscription | Whether after-hours use is included, and at what volume |

Put any quote against line G × H × I from the worksheet, and you have an ROI estimate built on your own numbers.

**Ask every provider the same question before you sign:** *what does a storm week cost compared with a quiet one?*

## Does after-hours answering affect reviews, retention and repeat business?

The honest answer: we didn’t find a primary study that measures the effect of after-hours answering on review scores, retention or repeat business, in HVAC, plumbing or any trade.

What is known sits on either side of the question. [BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/) of 1,002 US adults found that 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, 74% look for reviews written in the last three months, and 89% expect owners to respond to reviews. And in CallRail’s 2025 survey, 78% said they had abandoned a business after an unanswered call.

Reviews shape who gets the call, and an unanswered call can end the relationship before it starts. Neither proves that answering after hours lifts your rating. To find out, compare review volume and repeat bookings before and after you change coverage.

## After-hours statistics we left out, and why

These numbers appear across the pages that rank for this topic. We traced each one and couldn’t find a study behind it, or found the study says something else.

| The claim | What we found | What the data shows instead |
|---|---|---|
| “85% of callers whose calls go unanswered won’t call back” | Traces to a 2016 phone-vendor blog post that cites no study. It still appears, unsourced, in vendor press releases, including CallRail’s own January 2025 release. | 21% immediately call another business, and 78% have abandoned a business after an unanswered call (CallRail survey, 2025) |
| “80% (or 85%) of callers won’t leave a voicemail” | Traces to an uncited 2014 contributor post on Forbes | 42% say they leave one (CallRail survey, 2025); fewer than 3% actually did (Invoca platform data, 2024) |
| “62% of HVAC calls come outside business hours” | Credited to a trade magazine; no such study found. It may be a mutation of a 2016 study of 85 businesses across 58 industries that found 62% of calls went unanswered, which isn’t trade data. Variants like “30–50%” and “40–60%” cite no source at all. | 9.8% to 14.1% (ServiceTitan, 2025 data) |
| “78% of customers hire the first contractor who responds” | Attributed to industry research firms, with no study found | No primary data found |
| “HVAC shops miss 27% of inbound calls during peak season” | Mixes Invoca’s all-season home services figure with “peak season” | 27% of home services calls unanswered, any season (Invoca data, 2024) |
| “$126,000 a year lost to missed calls” | Vendor arithmetic built on the 62% figure | No primary dollar figure exists; use the worksheet |

![Fact-check graphic of four after-hours call statistics that trace to no study, including 85% won't call back and 62% of HVAC calls after hours, each shown next to what CallRail, ServiceTitan and Invoca data shows](https://cms.fieldcamp.ai/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/after-hours-call-statistics-myths-vs-sources.webp)Four of the most repeated claims, and what the primary data shows instead.The numbers that hold up point to the same practical fix: get after-hours callers to an answer, then measure what happens. That’s the job FieldCamp AI Receptionist is built for. It answers after-hours and overflow calls, triages each one on the emergency rules your shop writes (FieldCamp ships no emergency definition of its own), and puts true emergencies through to your on-call tech. Routine calls are captured with the caller’s details for the morning, or booked with the technician FieldCamp AI Dispatcher suggests when it’s connected. Calls keep a recording and transcript, and the dashboard shows calls, transfers, the busiest hour and how calls ended, so you can see what your after-hours calls turn into instead of estimating it. The setup is covered in [after-hours answering service for field service](/ai-receptionist/after-hours-answering-service/).

## Frequently Asked Questions

**What percentage of HVAC calls come in after hours?**

In ServiceTitan’s 2025 platform data for residential HVAC contractors, 9.8% of inbound calls came outside weekday business hours in October and 14.1% in June. Weekday evenings and early mornings made up 6.8% to 9.3% of calls, weekends 2.95% to 4.9%, and off-hours calls clustered between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.

**How much revenue does an HVAC company lose from missed after-hours calls?**

No published study gives a reliable dollar figure. Work it out from your own numbers: after-hours calls × share unanswered, minus the callers you win back, × booking rate × average after-hours ticket. Run it for your busiest and quietest months, because the after-hours share moves with the season.

**What does a missed call cost a plumbing company?**

The same worksheet applies. For the booking rate, ServiceTitan’s 2022 data report put plumbing at 43%, the highest of the trades it measured. We didn’t find a public dataset on the after-hours share of plumbing calls, so use your own call log for that line.

**Do callers leave a voicemail or call a competitor?**

In CallRail’s 2025 survey of 1,000 US consumers, 42% said they leave a voicemail, 24% turn to online chat, and 21% immediately call another business. Behaviour is harsher than the survey answers: Invoca’s 2024 platform data found fewer than 3% of callers pushed to voicemail left a message.

**What is the average booking rate for HVAC calls?**

38%, according to ServiceTitan’s 2022 data report on more than 3,000 trade businesses, against a 42% average across trades. The same report found booking rates fell after 6 p.m., so an evening call is less likely to book than a morning one under the same setup.

**Is an answering service cheaper than hiring a night receptionist?**

Compare the structures, not just the headline rates. A week has 123 hours outside Monday to Friday, 8 to 5. At the BLS median receptionist wage of $18.27 an hour (May 2025 data), staffing them is about $2,250 a week in wages alone, before benefits and cover. Answering services charge by usage instead, per minute, per call or by monthly allowance, so the comparison turns on your after-hours call volume.

**Do 85% of callers really never call back?**

We couldn’t find a study behind that number. It traces to a 2016 vendor blog post with no source. The best current data, CallRail’s 2025 consumer survey, found that 21% immediately call another business and 78% have abandoned a business after an unanswered call.

**Does answering after hours improve reviews or customer retention?**

No primary study we found measures it. BrightLocal’s 2026 survey shows 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses and 74% look for recent ones, so reviews shape who gets the call. To test the effect on your own shop, compare review volume and repeat bookings before and after you change coverage.

### Two sheets for costing your after-hours calls

The missed-call cost worksheet turns your call log, booking rate and invoices into a weekly, monthly and yearly figure, split by after-hours, daytime and peak weeks. The 12-month coverage planner maps the holidays and your trade’s hard weeks to a coverage choice for each month. Both arrive in your inbox as PDFs.

### Find out what your after-hours calls are worth

Bring your call log. We’ll walk your after-hours and overflow calls through FieldCamp AI Receptionist: answered, triaged on your rules, and handed off or captured for the morning.

[Book a demo](https://calendly.com/jeel-fieldcamp/30min)

## Sources

1. ServiceTitan, [“When Summer HVAC Demand Spikes, After-Hours Calls Do Too”](https://www.servicetitan.com/toolbox/state-of-the-trades/trends/hvac-summer-after-hours-call-spike), State of the Trades, published 3 June 2026 (2025 residential HVAC platform data).
2. ServiceTitan, [“Data Report: Average Call Booking Rates”](https://www.servicetitan.com/blog/data-call-booking-rates), published October 2022 (3,000+ US and Canadian trade businesses).
3. CallRail, [“Why businesses can’t afford to miss incoming calls”](https://www.callrail.com/blog/missed-calls-cost-businesses-more-than-ever), published 25 September 2025 (survey of 1,000 US consumers).
4. CallRail via Business Wire, [report release for “From conversations to conversions”](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250114793850/en/CallRail-Releases-Report-Benchmarking-Marketing-Efforts-for-Small-Businesses), published January 2025 (1.1 million leads).
5. Invoca, [“See How Much Missed Sales Calls Cost Home Services Businesses”](https://www.invoca.com/blog/how-much-missed-sales-calls-cost-home-services-businesses), published 23 May 2024 (Invoca platform data).
6. Invoca, [Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report 2026](https://www.invoca.com/reports/the-invoca-home-services-lead-conversion-benchmarks-report-2026), published July 2026 (70+ million-call platform dataset).
7. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, [Occupational Outlook Handbook: Receptionists](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/receptionists.htm), May 2025 wage data.
8. BrightLocal, [Local Consumer Review Survey 2026](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/) (1,002 US adults).
9. Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, [“The Short Life of Online Sales Leads”](https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads), Harvard Business Review study, published March 2011 (2,241 US companies).


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