America's trade shops miss more calls than anyone admits — possibly including yours. Published research puts unanswered business calls at 28–48% (CallRail's 2025 all-business figure is 28%; Invoca's 2026 home-services figure is 48%), but nobody has measured the trades shop by shop, with permission, on a fixed protocol. The National Missed-Call Audit is that measurement: original research into how HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and general contracting shops actually answer the phone.
It runs on volunteers only. Some published research in this space was built by cold-calling shops that never agreed to be measured — that is against our rules, and it produces worse data besides: a shop that knows a test call is coming sometime this week answers the way it answers customers. No cold calls. No surprise tests. No shop measured without asking.
Fill in the form below: your business, the number your customers call, your trade, and your business hours. Nobody is added any other way — there is no list, no scraping, and no outreach. If a shop is in this study, it is because the shop asked to be.
A person places three calls to your business number across the following 7 days, at varied, realistic customer moments — mid-morning, the lunch hour, late afternoon — always inside the business hours you gave. Our caller ID shows honestly. No call is ever recorded; TextBack never records calls.
Answered by a person · went to voicemail · rang out · number not working. That's the whole log — the same fixed protocol for every shop, so the results compare fairly.
Every participant receives a private one-page report: how their phone actually performed, at what times, and what that likely costs — calculated only from published, attributed industry figures, never invented math. The report is useful with no purchase, and it is sent only to you.
The Audit publishes percentages by trade and region — answer rates by time of day, voicemail rates, dead-number rates — aggregate and anonymized, always. No shop is ever named without its separate written permission. The methodology is published in full alongside the results: the sample, the protocol, the dates, and the honest note that participants volunteered.
Recruitment target for the first edition: 150–300 participating shops across the five trades, spread across regions, over roughly 6–8 weeks. That is a target, not a promise — if the first edition lands short, it publishes at the sample it honestly reached, with the number stated. A small honest index beats a padded one, every time.
Joining is free, and it is research participation — not a TextBack trial or subscription, and nothing is sold from your results. Give us the number your customers call, your trade (hvac, plumbing, electrical, roofing, general contracting), and your business hours, and tick the consent box so the calls are placed with your written agreement:
Yes — place the test calls. I agree that TextBack may call my business number three times over the next 7 days, at varied times inside the business hours I gave. I understand the calls come from an honestly identified number, are never recorded, and are logged only as: answered by a person, went to voicemail, rang out, or number not working. My shop's individual results are reported only to me. Anonymized results may be included in the published National Missed-Call Audit — my business is never named without my separate written permission. I can withdraw at any time by emailing the support address on this site; if I withdraw, my data is removed from the research.
Meanwhile: what are missed calls costing you? → · How TextBack answers this problem →