# Missed calls in a taxi business: how to work out what they cost you

> To work out what missed calls cost your taxi business, take the missed calls a day that would have been a job, multiply by your average fare, then multiply by 30. That gives you a monthly figure. Count the calls from your phone provider's call log and take the fare from your own booking records, not from memory.

By Joe, founder of Dispatch AI. Updated 2026-10-11. The web page: https://dispatchai.co.uk/guides/missed-calls-in-a-taxi-office/

Every taxi office has calls that ring out. The office is on another line, the Friday rush is on, or it's 3am and everyone has gone home. This guide shows you how to count the missed calls in your taxi business from your own phone records, how to tell which ones would have been jobs, and how to turn that into a monthly figure you can trust.


## What does a missed call cost a taxi business?

A missed call costs you the job the caller wanted. A call your office can't pick up rings out, and the customer rings someone else.

You can put a number on it with one sum:

**Missed calls a day that would have been a job × your average fare × 30 = what missed calls cost you a month.**

All three numbers come from your own records. Nobody else's figures belong in it, and a supplier who tells you what your firm is losing before looking at your call log is guessing.

The sum only counts the fare. It leaves out the return trip that caller would have booked, the regular who tried twice and now has another firm's number saved, and the driver who sat on the rank waiting for that job. So treat the answer as the floor, not the ceiling.


## How do you count missed calls?

Count missed calls from your phone provider's call log, over at least two normal weeks. Memory is no good here. The calls you remember are the ones you saw on the screen, and the ones at 2am you never saw at all.

Where the log lives depends on how your booking line is set up:

| Your phone set-up | Where to find the missed calls |
|---|---|
| A plain business landline | 1471 only tells you the last number that rang. Ask your provider for a report of incoming calls, or move the line to a service that keeps a call log |
| A cloud phone system | The call log in the provider's web portal. BT Cloud Voice, for example, marks these calls "Incoming missed" and lets you export the log as a CSV file |
| The booking line on a mobile | The phone's recent calls list. Write the day's missed calls down before the list fills up |
| Calls diverted to a mobile at night | The missed calls show on that mobile, not in the office system, so count both |

BT Cloud Voice's call log filters by today, yesterday, the last 7 days, the last 30 days, the current month or a custom range. Whoever your provider is, ask which report shows unanswered incoming calls with the date, the time and the caller's number.

Then clean the list. Here's the order that works:

1. Export two full weeks, avoiding Christmas, school holidays or a week the office was short.
2. Take out calls from your own drivers, staff and suppliers. Keep a list of their numbers so you can do this quickly each month.
3. Treat repeat calls from the same number within a few minutes as one call.
4. If that caller got through later the same day, take them out: you didn't lose the job.
5. Leave withheld numbers in, but mark them, because you can't check or ring them back.
6. Divide what's left by the number of days. That's your missed calls a day.


## Which missed calls would have been a job?

Not every missed call is a booking. Some are wrong numbers, sales calls or people ringing about lost property. You want the ones that would have been work, and you can find them two ways.

First, check the numbers against your booking records. A number that has booked with you before was most likely ringing to book again. This only works if your records keep the passenger's phone number, so if yours don't, start noting it with each booking. Your records already hold the time of each request, because outside London section 56 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 makes operators record every booking and the Statutory Standards ask councils to require the time, so you can also see whether a missed caller booked a few minutes later.

Second, ring a sample back. Pick ten missed numbers you don't recognise and call them the next day. Ask if they were after a car and whether they got one. You'll learn more from ten of those calls than from any report, and some of them will book.

Add the regulars to the callers who say they wanted a car. Divide by the days in your sample. That's your missed calls a day that would have been a job.


## How do you work out your average fare?

Take your average fare from your booking records for a recent month: the total of your phone bookings divided by the number of phone bookings.

Use phone bookings only. Account work, school contracts and jobs from a booking app don't come in on the phone line, so they don't belong in this sum.

If your missed calls bunch at one time of day, check the fare for that time too. Night calls in an airport town aren't the same jobs as weekday shopping runs, and a sum that mixes them hides where the money is.


## A worked example

**Example only. These are made-up figures to show the arithmetic, not numbers from any real firm.**

| Step | Example figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Unanswered calls a day, two-week average | 9 | The phone provider's call log |
| After taking out drivers, staff and repeats | 6 | Your own list of numbers |
| Would have been a job | 4 | Regulars in your booking records, plus callbacks |
| Average fare of a phone booking | £18 | Your booking records for the month |
| What missed calls cost a month | 4 × £18 × 30 = £2,160 | The sum |

Run the same table with your own figures. If you close one day a week, multiply by the days you're open in a month instead of 30.


## When do the missed calls happen?

Sort your cleaned list by the hour the call came in. The pattern tells you what kind of fix you need.

Calls missed in the day, while the office is open, usually mean the line was busy or one person was doing three jobs at once. Calls missed on Friday and Saturday evenings mean the rush is bigger than the office. Calls missed overnight mean nobody is there at all.

Each one has a different answer. Our guide to [taxi call overflow](https://dispatchai.co.uk/guides/taxi-call-overflow/) covers the daytime and rush-hour problem, [handling the Friday night rush](https://dispatchai.co.uk/guides/handling-the-friday-night-rush/) covers the weekend, and [night cover without a night controller](https://dispatchai.co.uk/guides/taxi-night-cover-without-a-night-controller/) covers the hours after the office goes home.


## How do you cut the number of missed calls?

Start with the changes that cost least, and count again after each one.

**Ring back missed callers.** Go through the call log at the start of each shift and ring back missed callers you can. It saves some jobs and tells you which calls were real.

**Let the line ring somewhere else.** On a BT business line, a no-reply divert sends calls you don't answer within 15 seconds to another number, and a separate divert covers calls that arrive while the line is engaged. BT charges the diverted part of the call at its standard rates. Other providers time their diverts differently, so ask yours.

**Put more than one phone on the number.** On BT Cloud Voice, for example, a hunt group lets your people answer calls to one number from their own phones, so a second person can pick up when the first is on a call.

**Use an answering service or software for the overflow.** A person or an AI phone agent can take the calls your office can't. Dispatch AI is booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms: its AI phone agent answers your booking line when your office doesn't, quotes your own fixed prices and books the job into your Dispatch AI account. You can hear it for yourself on [the demo line](https://dispatchai.co.uk/ring-it/), and our guide to the [AI phone agent for taxi firms](https://dispatchai.co.uk/guides/ai-phone-agent-for-taxi-firms/) explains how one works.

Whatever you pick, count your missed calls the same way a month later. If the number hasn't moved, the fix isn't working.


## Make it a monthly number

Your missed calls a day belongs with your other [taxi business numbers to track](https://dispatchai.co.uk/guides/taxi-business-numbers-to-track/), next to bookings, fares and driver hours. Export the call log on the same day each month, clean it the same way, and write the figure down. After three months you'll know your real pattern, and you'll know whether the changes you made are paying.

If you'd like a hand with the counting, a [free booking review](https://dispatchai.co.uk/review/) goes through your calls and your missed-call sum with you.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why multiply by 30?

Thirty is a rough month. If your office closes on some days, or you only take bookings on certain nights, multiply by the number of days you actually take calls in a month. The point is to get from a daily figure you can count to a monthly figure you can compare with what a fix would cost.

### Does a missed call always mean a lost job?

No. Some callers ring back and get through, some are drivers or suppliers, and some were never going to book. That's why you clean the call log and check the numbers before you do the sum. What's left after that check is the figure worth acting on.

### Do calls that hit an engaged tone show as missed?

That depends on your phone system and your provider. Some logs show them, some don't, and a plain landline won't show either. Ask your provider whether its report includes calls that arrived while the line was busy. If it doesn't, your count will come out too low on exactly the nights you're busiest.

### Should I ring back every missed number?

Ring back the ones you can, as soon as you can. A callback that books is a job saved, and the answers tell you which missed calls were real work. Withheld numbers can't be rung back, so keep them in the count but don't spend time on them.

### Can I use the same sum for WhatsApp messages and emails?

Yes, if those messages go unanswered long enough for the customer to give up. Count the messages that never got a reply, or got one too late, check them against your booking records the same way, and use the same average fare and the same 30.


## Sources

- [Call Logging on BT Cloud Voice (BT Business)](https://business.bt.com/help/article/what-call-logging-options-do-i-have/) how the call log shows "Incoming missed" calls, date filters and CSV export
- [Using Call diversion to forward calls (BT Business)](https://business.bt.com/help/article/using-call-diversion-to-forward-calls/) the no-reply divert after 15 seconds, the engaged divert and how diverted calls are charged
- [Hunt Groups for BT Cloud Voice and how to use them (BT Business)](https://business.bt.com/help/article/hunt-groups-for-bt-cloud-voice-and-how-to-use-them/) one number answered from several people's phones
- [Withhold your number and find out who's called using 141, 1470 and 1471 (BT Business)](https://business.bt.com/help/article/withhold-your-number-and-find-out-whos-called-using-141-1470-and-1471) 1471 gives the last caller's number only
- [Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards (Department for Transport)](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statutory-taxi-and-private-hire-vehicle-standards/statutory-taxi-and-private-hire-vehicle-standards) section 8, what operators should record for each booking
- [Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, section 56 (legislation.gov.uk)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/57/section/56) operators must record the particulars of every booking

Dispatch AI is a trading name of CABO TECH SOLUTION AI LTD, registered in England and Wales, company no. 16255667.