Common problems
Some enquiries are going unanswered
Why enquiries to a small business can go unanswered, what tends to be behind it, one practical thing to change, and a free nine-question scan that shows where yours may be going.
How this tends to happen
Enquiries often arrive when nobody is free to answer them — outside working hours, during a job, or while someone is already on another call. If nothing picks up in that moment, the enquiry may simply end there.
When customers can reach a business through several channels — phone, text, email, a website form, social messages — some of those channels may be watched less closely than others, and an enquiry on a quiet channel can be easy to miss.
A missed enquiry that nobody notices cannot be returned. Without some way of knowing a call or message was missed, the chance to reply may be gone before anyone realises it was there.
One thing you can do
Decide what happens to an enquiry when nobody can take it: who answers, by when, and how — for example a voicemail message that promises a call back within a set time, or a person or service that picks up when you are busy. Then count your unanswered enquiries again at the end of the review window.
Find out where you stand
The scan asks how many enquiries a typical week brings, how many go unanswered, and whether you have a way of knowing when one is missed. Where you can give a typical job value, it estimates what unanswered enquiries may be worth — as a range worked out from your own numbers, never a measurement — and it says so when it cannot.
The scan asks nine short questions, stores nothing, needs no account, and says plainly when it cannot tell — “not sure” is always a fine answer.
Run the free Business Opportunity Scan →
NiteOwl builds Remy, an AI receptionist for small businesses, and this is one of the problems it is designed for. The advice above works whether or not you ever use it.