Missed call

A missed call is an inbound call that never reached a live person or a system able to help, because it rang out, met a busy line, went to voicemail or was abandoned.

For a vet clinic, missed calls are rarely about carelessness. They pile up at predictable times: when the desk is checking in a full morning list, during lunch cover, in the evening pickup rush and after closing. The team is busy with people in the building, and the phone loses.

That figure is MissedCalls.help data reported by Today's Veterinary Business, and it is worth checking against your own logs.

What counts as missed

Decide your definition before you count. Most clinics include calls that rang with no answer, calls that hit an engaged line, calls that went to voicemail and calls abandoned on hold. Calls that were answered and then transferred are not missed, even if the transfer took a while.

What a missed call costs

Each missed call carries a reason. It might be a new client looking for a first visit, an existing client booking a vaccine, or someone asking about a refill. Some of those callers ring back. Others text, email or try another clinic. How many return is an assumption you should test, not something to take on faith. A missed-call audit, which matches unanswered numbers against later calls and bookings, is the most reliable way to find out.

Reducing missed calls

Common fixes include adjusting the rota around busy hours, adding overflow cover, offering after-hours answering and sending an automatic text to missed callers so they have a way to reply.

An example

At a two-vet clinic, the manager exports a week of call logs and highlights every unanswered number. Most of the gaps fall in the hour after opening and the hour before closing. Several of those numbers never called again that week, and none of them booked, so the clinic adds overflow cover at both times.

How Tilly handles it

Tilly answers the calls your team can't, as overflow, after hours, on a weekly schedule or for all calls, in English and Spanish. Each call appears in your dashboard with a summary.

To count and cost your own missed calls, read the missed-call audit guide and the cost of missed calls article. Related: answer rate and missed-call text-back.