Every new customer starts with a first contact. For many small businesses that first contact is a phone call, and a surprising share of those calls never reach a person.
What the research shows
In Clio's 2024 secret-shopper study of 500 US law firms, only 40% of firms answered the phone calls, down from 56% in 2019, according to a write-up by 2Civility. Clio is a software vendor, so treat it as one data point.
Home services show a similar pattern. Invoca's research reports that 27% of calls to home services businesses go unanswered and that less than 3% of callers who reach voicemail leave a message. It is vendor research without a published sample size.
Why it happens
Nobody is ignoring customers on purpose. Calls arrive while you are with another client, on a job site, at lunch or after hours. One person cannot cover the phone and the work at the same time.
What an AI voice agent does about it
An AI voice agent answers every call, day or night. It asks the questions you would ask, books the appointment or consultation on your calendar, and hands anything urgent to a person. It tells callers it is an AI assistant, and it does not give medical or legal advice.
Where to start
You do not need to automate everything. Start by finding out how many calls you miss and when. A free AI audit with ConnectATD maps that for your business and recommends the smallest change that helps.