How many calls is your vet clinic missing? A one-week phone audit

By the Tilly editorial team · Updated October 7, 2026

Most vet clinics don't know how many calls they miss, and published estimates suggest the number is higher than teams expect. You can find your own figure in one week, with the phone system you already have. This guide shows you what to count, where the data lives, what to do each day and how to read the results, so you can decide whether your clinic needs to act and where.

The short answer: most clinics don't know

Ask a practice manager how many calls the clinic misses and the honest answer is usually a guess. The phone rings while the team is with a client, and nobody counts the calls that ring out. Those calls don't leave a trace at the desk, so they are easy to underestimate.

Published estimates give a sense of scale:

That is MissedCalls.help data reported by Today's Veterinary Business. It is an industry estimate, not your clinic's number. Your clinic may do much better, or worse. A one-week audit tells you which, and it shows you when the missed calls happen, which matters more than the total.

What counts as a missed call?

A missed call is any inbound call where the caller did not reach a person or useful cover. That includes calls that ring out, callers who hang up while waiting or on hold, calls that go to voicemail, and calls that hit a busy signal because every line was in use.

Be strict about the definition before you start, or the numbers will flatter you. Count four kinds of missed call:

• Ring-outs. The phone rang until the caller gave up or the system cut the call off.
• Abandoned calls. The caller hung up while in a queue or on hold. Your call abandonment rate measures these.
• Voicemail. The call went to voicemail, whether or not the caller left a message. A message is not an answer, even if you call back later.
• Busy signals. The caller could not get through at all because every line was taken. Some systems don't log these, so check with your carrier.

Two things are not missed calls: calls your team transferred deliberately, and calls answered by cover you arranged, such as an after-hours service. Count those separately, so you can see how much your cover is doing.

Also decide how you will treat repeat callers. If one owner rings three times in ten minutes and gets through on the third try, that is three calls but one caller. Track both. Raw calls show the load on your lines. Unique callers show the experience your clients had.

Where does your call data live?

Call data for most clinics lives in the phone carrier's online portal or the VoIP provider's dashboard, which log every inbound call with a time, duration and outcome. Some practice software also records calls. If none of these is available, a simple paper or spreadsheet log kept at the desk for one week works too.

Check these places before you start the week:

• Carrier portal. Most business phone carriers offer call detail records online. Look for an export to CSV or a spreadsheet. You want the date, time, caller number, duration and whether the call was answered.
• VoIP dashboard. Cloud phone systems usually have a reporting page that shows answered, missed and abandoned calls, often by hour. Some also show hold time and voicemail counts.
• Practice software (PIMS). Some practice management systems log calls or integrate with the phone system. Check whether yours does, and whether it records unanswered calls or only answered ones.
• Voicemail system. Note how many messages arrive and when. If voicemail is separate from your phone system, you will need to count messages by hand.

If you can't find the data, call your carrier or phone provider and ask: "Can you give me a report of every inbound call last week, with times and whether it was answered?" Most can.

If your system records very little, keep a manual log for the week. It takes discipline, but it still gives you a better number than a guess. See the next section for what to write down.

Day by day: the one-week audit

Pick an ordinary week. Avoid holidays, the week after a holiday and any week when you are short-staffed for unusual reasons. Tell the team what you are doing and why: this is about finding gaps in the system, not judging anyone.

Before you start: set up your log

Make a simple log, in a spreadsheet or on paper. One row per inbound call, with these columns:

• Date and time the call came in
• The last four digits of the caller's number (enough to spot repeat callers without copying full numbers into a spare sheet)
• Outcome: answered, ring-out, abandoned, voicemail or busy
• Whether a voicemail message was left
• Time of callback, if one was made
• Reason for the call, if known (booking, refill, results, question, other)

Keep the log in a secure place and delete the caller digits once you have finished the analysis. If your carrier export already has most of these columns, you only need to add the outcome and callback columns by hand.

Monday: capture the busiest day

Start on Monday, because opening time on Monday is often the busiest hour of the week. A 2018 analysis by Moneypenny of thousands of calls to UK vet practices, published by VetShow, found that Monday between 9 and 10am had the highest volume of emergency calls. That is dated UK data, not a US benchmark, but it is a good reason to make sure Monday morning is in your sample.

At the end of the day, export or total the calls. Note how many came in during the first hour and how many were missed.

Tuesday: check voicemail handling

Keep logging. Today, also time your voicemail process. When was each message first listened to? When was the caller called back? A message returned the next day is, for many callers, the same as a missed call.

Wednesday: look at lunch

Keep logging and pay attention to the lunch period. Who was on the phone? Were breaks staggered? Compare calls missed over lunch with the hours either side.

Thursday: test the after-hours path

Keep logging. After you close, call your own number. Listen to the greeting. Is it current? Does it give a clear next step? Ask for a person and see what happens. A possible emergency should reach a person on your team or your emergency partner. Note what you find. Also count the calls that came in overnight on every night this week.

Friday: watch the end of the day

Keep logging, with extra attention to the last hour before closing. Many owners call on the way home, and many clinics are busiest at the desk at the same time.

Saturday and Sunday: count the closed hours

If you are closed, count the calls that arrived anyway. If you open on Saturday, log it like a weekday. Weekend calls show you how much demand falls outside your opening hours.

The following Monday: match repeat callers

Before you analyze, use the last four digits to see how many missed callers called again later the same day or the next day. Whether missed callers call back is an assumption you should test, and this is how you test it. Don't assume either way until you have looked.

Reading your results: answer rate, peaks and voicemail

Now total the week. Three readings matter most.

Your answer rate

Your answer rate is answered calls divided by all inbound calls. Work it out for the whole week, for each day and for each hour. The weekly figure is your headline. The hourly figures tell you where to act.

Compare your weekly figure with the published estimate above. If you are close to it, you are in common company. If you are well below it, look hard at the hours that pull you down.

Your peaks

Make a simple chart: hours across the bottom, days down the side, and the number of missed calls in each cell. Shade the busiest cells. Many clinics see two or three dark patches: opening time, lunch and the end of the day are the usual ones. If the dark patches sit outside your opening hours, the gap is after hours, not at the desk.

Your voicemail

Count voicemails received, messages left and average time to callback. A high number of calls to voicemail with few messages left means callers are hanging up instead. A long callback time means messages are piling up.

Your repeat callers

Look at what your Monday matching showed. How many missed callers rang again, and how quickly? How many didn't? That is your clinic's own evidence, and it is more useful than any industry figure.

If you want to turn your results into an estimate of lost visits, enter your answer rate and call volume into the missed-call calculator. It shows the formula and every assumption, so you can change any of them.

What to do next: three coverage options by result

Your results will usually point to one of three patterns. Each has a different fix.

Result 1: missed calls cluster at peaks

If most missed calls happen in two or three busy hours, start with the rota. Name one person who owns the phone in each peak hour, stagger lunch breaks and move non-phone tasks out of those hours. If you still can't cover the peaks, add overflow cover that answers only the calls your team can't reach in time.

Result 2: missed calls are mostly after hours

If the gap is evenings, weekends and holidays, you need an after-hours path. Decide what routine callers should be able to do (book, cancel, leave a request) and make sure a possible emergency always reaches a person: your on-call vet or your emergency partner. Our page on after-hours answering explains the options.

Result 3: missed calls happen all day

If calls are missed across the day, the problem is usually roles, not rotas. The person on the phone is also doing too many other jobs. Options include adding phone staff, moving routine requests to text, or adding all-day cover that answers whenever your team can't. A human answering service, an AI front desk or a mix of the two can each fit here. The complete guide to phone coverage for vet clinics compares these models and their trade-offs in detail.

Whichever result you get, repeat the audit after you make a change. One week before and one week after is the simplest way to know whether the change worked.

Get it done for you: the free missed-call audit

Running the audit yourself is worthwhile, but it takes time your team may not have. If you prefer, Tilly can do it for you. Tilly is the AI front desk built for independent vet clinics. Send us your phone system's call report and we'll show you how many calls go unanswered, when it happens, and what it may be costing you. It's free, there's no obligation, and you don't need to give us access to your practice software.