The missed-call calculator: what the phone costs your business

The three numbers — and why exactly these

1. Calls per week: the base quantity. Count instead of guessing — the call log from one ordinary week is enough.
2. Share missed: how many of them reach nobody? This is where the honest uncertainty sits, which is why it is your own figure and not a stored "market rate". We deliberately assume nothing on your behalf.
3. Average job or appointment value: your own figure, out of the books.

The formula behind it, no magic: calls × share missed × conversion assumption × job value = lost revenue. Everything after that is multiplying up to a month or a year. The calculator on the scoco.ai home page condenses this into two sliders: missed new customers per month — calls × share missed × conversion assumption, scaled to a month — and average job value. Their product is the lost revenue per month.

One run through, as a scenario

Explicitly a worked example: 40 calls a week, 15 % of them missed (= 6), one in three of those missed calls would have converted (= 2 a week, roughly 9 a month), average job €500. On the calculator, that is 9 missed new customers and a job value of €500: €4,500 of lost revenue a month. The calculator sets scoco.ai's entry price against it (see the box below); even against around €99 a month, a common price point for an AI phone assistant in the German-speaking market (providers' pricing pages, as of 2 November 2026), that is a multiple. Put in your own numbers: a one-person beauty salon might land at €200, a plumbing and heating business in a cold snap at a multiple of it.

The limits of the sum — named on purpose

An honest calculator also says what it does not know:

• The conversion assumption stays an assumption until you have measured it. Set it conservatively — better to understate.
• Not every saved call is extra revenue: some callers would have tried again later. The calculator models the new-customer case, where "later" can also mean "at a competitor".
• Soft effects are missing: undisturbed work, no scraps of paper on the desk, every request documented — real, but not something you can put a credible number on. So we leave them out instead of inventing them.
• Hang-up rate: some callers do not want to speak to an AI, and anyone calculating strictly takes a flat deduction for it (background in "Do callers notice they are talking to an AI?").

From the result to the decision

The calculator's result is the starting point, not the verdict. The three steps after it:

1. Hold it against the threshold: is your result above the monthly fee? The threshold logic in detail: "From how many calls a day is an AI phone assistant worth it?"
2. Replace the assumptions: during the trial the assumptions turn into measurements — the assistant logs every request. It ends after 4 weeks or 100 minutes, whichever comes first; if it runs out before the month is over, extrapolate to a month from the days it lasted.
3. Check the total cost: the base fee is not everything — the hidden cost items are in "What does an AI phone assistant cost?".