Guide 
What You’ll Have at the End
By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear, numbers-based picture of what unanswered calls are actually costing your trades business, and a working comparison against what a voice AI genie costs per month. You’ll also know exactly which calls your genie should handle first.
Why This Matters for Trades Businesses
A plumbing supply branch loses 3 to 4 jobs a day to unanswered calls. Pricing questions after 4pm. Stock checks at 7am. “Are you open Saturday.”
Each one was a sale.
The caller didn’t leave a voicemail. They called the next number on Google.
This isn’t a phone problem. It’s a coverage problem. And it’s one of the most expensive problems a trades business can have, because the cost is invisible. You never see the jobs you didn’t win.
A genie answers all of those calls. Voice. Text. 24/7. It reads from your existing product database, your pricing sheets, your FAQs. And it costs less than one missed job a week.
Here’s how to run the comparison yourself.
Prerequisites
Before you start, have these ready:
- A rough idea of how many calls your business receives per week
- Your average job value (even a ballpark figure works)
- An estimate of how many calls go unanswered after hours or during busy periods
- About 20 minutes
You don’t need a Help Genie account yet. You can run the cost comparison first, then decide.
Step 1: Count Your Unanswered Calls
Action: Pull your call data for the last 30 days.
Check your phone system’s missed call log, your voicemail count, or your after-hours call summary if your carrier provides one. If you don’t have that data, estimate.
A typical trades business with two staff on the phone misses 15 to 25 calls a week. After-hours gaps (5pm to 8am), lunch cover gaps, and peak busy periods are where most fall through.
What to note down:
- Total missed or unanswered calls per week
- What times those calls happen (after hours, early morning, lunchtime)
- The most common reasons callers phone in (pricing, availability, bookings, “are you open”)
Verifiable result: You have a weekly missed call number and a short list of the call types you’re losing.
Step 2: Calculate the Revenue You’re Leaving on the Table
Action: Multiply your missed calls by your average job or sale value.
This is the step most trades businesses skip. They think of missed calls as an inconvenience. They’re actually a revenue leak.
Here’s a simple formula:
Missed calls per week x conversion rate x average job value x 52 = annual revenue gap
Use a conservative conversion rate of 20 to 30%. That’s a reasonable estimate for inbound enquiries in trades and services.
Example:
- 20 missed calls per week
- 25% would have converted
- Average job value: $300
- Annual revenue gap: 20 x 0.25 x $300 x 52 = $78,000
That number is uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be.
Even if your numbers are much smaller, the math usually surprises people. A small electrical contractor missing 5 calls a week at a $200 average still loses around $13,000 a year.
Verifiable result: You have an estimated annual revenue gap from unanswered calls.
Step 3: Map the Calls Your Genie Would Handle
Action: Sort your missed call types into two buckets: “genie handles this” and “needs a human.”
Not every call needs a person. Most trades enquiries fall into a short list of repeatable questions:
- Pricing and quotes for common jobs
- Stock availability or product specs
- Trading hours and location
- Appointment booking or callback requests
- “Do you do [specific service]?”
A genie handles all of those. It reads from your knowledge base, which you build from your existing documents: price lists, product sheets, FAQs, booking links, service area info.
Calls that genuinely need a human are things like complex on-site assessments, emergency escalations, or sensitive billing disputes. Your genie can capture those callers’ details and route them to the right person.
What to note down:
- Which call types could be answered without a human
- What percentage of your total missed calls those represent
For most trades businesses, 60 to 80% of missed enquiries are answerable without a person involved.
Verifiable result: You have a clear picture of which calls a genie would actually field.
Step 4: Look Up the Actual Genie Cost
Action: Check Help Genie’s current pricing at helpgenie.ai and note the monthly cost for one genie.
Help Genie uses flat-rate pricing per genie per month. There’s no per-call or per-minute billing. That predictability matters when you’re doing a cost comparison, because you’re not guessing what the bill will be in a busy week.
The Professional plan includes:
- 30 calls included per month to start, with scalable usage
- Full voice and text support
- Knowledge base (upload your docs, product sheets, FAQs)
- Lead capture and callback forms
- Phone number for your region
- Embeddable widget for your website
- 24/7 availability
There’s also a free plan with 10 calls per month. That’s enough to test the genie on your actual callers before you commit.
The comparison is simple:
Monthly genie cost vs. monthly revenue gap from missed calls.
If your cost comparison from Step 2 shows you’re losing $1,500 or more per month in missed calls, and a genie costs a fraction of that, the math is straightforward.
Verifiable result: You have a direct cost-vs-revenue comparison on paper.
Step 5: Set Up Your Knowledge Base to Match Your Call List
Action: Gather the documents your genie will read from, based on the call types you mapped in Step 3.
This is where a lot of trades businesses hesitate. They assume setting this up is technical. It’s not.
You upload your existing documents. That’s it. PDFs, Word docs, website pages, FAQs. If you have a price list in a spreadsheet, export it as a PDF and upload it. If your trading hours are on your website, the knowledge base can pull from that.
For a trades business starting out, a solid knowledge base covers:
- Your services and service area
- Common pricing ranges for standard jobs
- Trading hours and contact details
- How to book or request a callback
- Your most frequently asked product or stock questions
You don’t need to write scripts. The genie reads from your documents and answers in plain language.
Verifiable result: You have a starter document list ready to upload the moment you create your account.
Common Gotchas
“I don’t have my missed call data.” Estimate. Ask your front-of-house staff how many calls they think go unanswered in a typical day. Even a rough number gives you a useful comparison.
“Our jobs are all different sizes, so I can’t use an average.” Use a floor. Take your smallest typical job and use that as the conversion value. If the math still shows a gap, the comparison holds.
“I’m not sure what to put in the knowledge base.” Start with your five most common caller questions. Answer each one in a paragraph. That’s your first knowledge base. You can add to it over time.
“I don’t want a genie replacing my staff.” It doesn’t. Your staff still handle everything that needs them. The genie covers the calls that currently fall through entirely: the 6am Saturday morning call, the after-hours pricing question, the “do you do X” that nobody picks up.
See How the Numbers Stack Up for Your Business
The ROI calculator at Help Genie lets you plug in your own numbers and get a projected return based on your call volume and average job value.
If you’re in trades and ready to stop losing jobs to unanswered calls, visit the trades page to see how other businesses in your industry are using genies for exactly this.
Start free. No credit card required. Your first 10 calls are on us.