In September 2026, SearchLight Digital graded 232,635 inbound calls, forms and chats across more than 1,500 home-service contractors. 57,508 booked on the spot. 175,127 did not.
Of the ones that did not book, 78 percent were never bookable: existing customers moving an appointment, billing questions, dead air, solicitors, wrong numbers, people outside the service area. 35,728 of them, about one in five of the unbooked, were a homeowner with a real service request who left without an appointment.
- Booked on the spot: 57,508 of 232,635 contacts
- Unbooked: 175,127
- Unbooked and never bookable: 78 percent
- Unbooked, a homeowner with a real request: 35,728, about one in five
- Booked contacts divided by all contacts: 24.7 percent
- Booked contacts divided by bookable contacts: 61.7 percent
SearchLight's own conclusion is that the honest revenue-at-risk number is about 11 percent of unbooked contacts, not all of them. SearchLight sells lead-grading software and the sample is its own network, so treat the figures as that network's numbers, not an industry census.
The point survives the caveat. The vendors who tell an owner that every missed call was a lost job are using the wrong denominator. The call worth catching is the one in five that is a real job, and the way to know whether you caught it is to grade last week's unbooked calls yourself: how many were a homeowner with a real request?
What ProxMedia does about it: an AI receptionist for plumbing companies answers the one in five when nobody else can, takes the details and books the visit. The other four in five get a message taken, which is all they needed.
Source: SearchLight Digital, "How Many of Your Unbooked Calls Were Actually Bookable? Lead Quality Benchmarks for Home Services (2026)", data through September 30, 2026, updated October 8, 2026 (232,635 contacts, 1,500+ home-service contractors).