After-hours calls: what customers do when nobody answers

You can't see what a caller does after your voicemail picks up. That's the problem with missed calls: the loss is invisible. But you can reason about it, because you have been the caller. Think of the last time you phoned a business at night and got a recording.

We don't have a reliable number for how many callers do each of the things below, and you should be wary of anyone who quotes you one. What we can do is walk through the options and what each one costs you.

What a caller does when nobody answers

1. Hangs up and calls the next company. On a phone, the next result on the search page is one tap away. For anything urgent, this is the most likely move.
2. Leaves a voicemail. Existing customers do, and so do patient people with a routine request. A stranger with a broken furnace often doesn't.
3. Texts the number. Many business numbers are mobile, so it works, if you see it. If yours is a landline, the text goes nowhere.
4. Fills in a web form. Some will, if your site makes it easy to find. Then it becomes a race between your reply and everyone else's.
5. Asks around. A neighbour, a local group, a friend. They'll get a recommendation, and it probably isn't you.
6. Waits until morning. Only when the problem is real but not urgent, and only if they trust you enough to wait.

What decides which one they pick

• Urgency. A lockout at 11pm and a quote for a fence are not the same call. The more urgent it is, the shorter the caller's patience.
• Alternatives. In a city with thirty plumbers, the next name is always available. In a small town, the caller may wait because there is no next name.
• Relationship. Someone who already knows you will leave a message. Someone who found you a minute ago will move on.
• What the greeting says. A greeting that says when you'll call back sets an expectation. A beep sets none.

The calls that matter most are the least patient

This is the uncomfortable part. Emergency calls are the ones that arrive after hours, the ones with the shortest patience, and often the ones with the biggest tickets: a burst pipe, a no-heat night, a car in a ditch. Routine calls come in the daytime and will wait. The ones that won't wait are the ones your voicemail is worst at.

What you can do about it

• Answer yourself. It works, and it is exhausting. It only works if you're willing to be on call all the time.
• Rotate on-call. If you have a team, a shared on-call phone spreads the load. It needs someone to always carry it.
• Use an answering service. A human one costs more and puts a person on the phone. An automated one costs less and follows rules. The answering service comparison has the published prices.
• Send an automatic text. Missed-call text back is better than nothing, though a caller who has already dialled someone else may not reply. It also needs carrier registration first. See missed-call text back.
• Make your greeting honest. If nobody will pick up until 8am, say so, and say what to do if it can't wait.

A test you can run tonight

1. At 9pm, call your own business number from a phone that isn't yours.
2. Note how many rings before it goes to voicemail, and what the greeting says.
3. Ask yourself honestly: would you leave a message? Would you call back?
4. Then call your three nearest competitors, and note who picks up.

It takes five minutes, and it shows you the business the way a caller sees it. If your competitors don't answer either, that's an opening. If they do, you now know what you're up against.

Wenly exists for the first of those outcomes and the second. It answers every call in your company's name, marks the urgent ones, and gets you the lead in 30 seconds. Hear it answer as your business, or read about after-hours answering.