If you have looked at answering services, you have seen the same few numbers everywhere: 62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered, 85% of those callers never call back, and missed calls cost the average business $126,000 a year.
We sell a phone answering service, so those numbers would suit us too. Before using any of them, we checked where they come from.
“62% of calls go unanswered”
Source: a study published by 411 Locals, a local search marketing company, in January 2016. It followed calls to 85 businesses across 58 industries for 30 days. 37.8% of calls were answered, 37.8% went to voicemail, and 24.3% got no response at all.
It is a real study with a stated scope, which is more than most figures here can claim. It is also small, about ten years old, and often quoted as if it were recent. And it says nothing about what those callers did next.
Verdict: fair to quote with its date and sample size. Not a reason to assume your business misses 62% of its calls.
“85% of callers who can’t reach you won’t call back”
This one appears on nearly every answering-service website. When it is credited at all, the credit usually goes to another answering-service company or to a roundup that quotes one. We could not find a published study with a method behind it.
Verdict: don’t rely on it.
“80% of callers sent to voicemail won’t leave a message”
Widely repeated, and again we found no study behind it. The closest measured number we found comes from a CallRail survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers published in September 2025: 42% said they leave a voicemail.
Verdict: use the CallRail figure instead, and remember it records what people say they do, not a count of real calls.
“78% have abandoned a business over an unanswered call”
This comes from the same CallRail survey, along with 82% who said they would call a competitor if a business does not answer. The survey is recent and its sample is stated. It measures attitudes rather than behavior, so read it as a sign of how callers feel, not as a lost-call rate.
Verdict: usable, with that caveat.
“Missed calls cost the average business $126,000 a year”
Figures like $126,000 or $62,000 a year are not measurements. They are arithmetic: an assumed number of missed calls, multiplied by an assumed close rate and an assumed job value. Nothing is wrong with the arithmetic. The question is whose assumptions go into it.
Verdict: run the same arithmetic with your own numbers instead.
What to use instead
Your own call log beats any national average. Count the calls you miss in a normal week, estimate how many were real work, and use your own close rate and job size. Our missed call calculator does the multiplication and shows every step, and our guide to the formula explains each number.
Whatever the total, it is what is at stake, not what anyone can promise to recover. Linevio answers the calls; winning the work is still up to you.