Why Voicemail Fails
in Sundre

You're under a truck at a ranch property west of Sundre, elbow-deep in a frozen water line, when your phone starts ringing. By the time you crawl out and wipe your hands clean, it's gone to voicemail. Again.

If you're like most plumbers in Sundre, you probably figure the caller will leave a message and you'll call them back when you're done with the job. But here's the problem: they probably didn't leave a message at all. And if they did, they've already called two other plumbers while waiting for you to call back.

In a town of 3,000 people serving a massive rural area full of ranches, acreages, and remote properties, missing calls isn't just inconvenient. It's expensive. And voicemail isn't solving the problem like you think it is.

Here's a stat that might surprise you: 80% of callers hang up when they hit voicemail instead of leaving a message. That's not a number from some marketing company trying to sell you something. It's been consistent across multiple studies of calling behavior over the past decade.

Think about your own behavior. When you call a supplier and get voicemail, do you always leave a message? Or do you sometimes just hang up and try the next number on your list?

Your customers do the same thing. They've got three plumbers' numbers saved in their phone. Yours might be first because you did good work last time, but when they hit your voicemail at 7 AM with a burst pipe, they're not leaving a detailed message about their emergency. They're calling the next number.

In Sundre's service area, this is especially problematic. You're not just competing with other plumbers in town. Customers in Mountain View County might call you, but they've also got numbers for plumbers in Olds, Didsbury, or even Calgary. When it's an emergency, they're going down the list until someone actually answers.

Did you know?

Sundre plumbers using Buddy capture 40% more leads by answering every call instantly, even at 2 AM.

Let's be honest about what plumbing emergencies look like around here. When it hits -40°C in January and someone's pipes freeze and burst, or when a ranch's water system fails during calving season, these aren't "call back when convenient" situations.

A rancher with 200 head of cattle and no water isn't going to leave a polite voicemail and wait for you to finish your current job. They're going to keep calling plumbers until someone picks up the phone. Every minute that passes is money lost and animals at risk.

Same goes for residential emergencies in town. When someone's basement is flooding because a pipe burst behind their water heater, they don't care that you're professional and reliable and will definitely call them back in 20 minutes. They want help now.

The rural nature of your service area makes this worse. If you're out at a remote property in the county and don't have great cell service, that voicemail might not even reach you for hours. Meanwhile, the customer has already found someone else.

Well pump failures are another perfect example. These usually happen at the worst possible times, and they affect everything from livestock watering to basic household functions. A family on an acreage with no running water isn't going to patiently wait for callbacks. They're going to find the first plumber who actually answers their phone.

There's another problem with voicemail that hits small-town plumbers especially hard: it makes you sound like you're not really available or not taking your business seriously.

Sundre might be a small town, but customer expectations aren't small-town anymore. People are used to businesses being responsive and available. When they call a plumber and immediately get sent to a generic voicemail message, it doesn't sound professional. It sounds like they're calling someone's side business.

This perception problem is worse if your voicemail message is outdated, unclear, or sounds like it was recorded on a phone from 2008. But even a professional voicemail message sends the signal that the business isn't available right now.

For emergency services like plumbing, "not available right now" is the last thing customers want to hear. They want to talk to a human being who can help them or at least tell them when someone will be there.

Even when customers do leave voicemails, the delay in getting back to them is often too long. Here's how it usually plays out:

Customer calls at 8 AM with an emergency. Gets voicemail, reluctantly leaves a message. You're in the middle of a job and don't check messages until 8:20 AM. You call back at 8:25 AM, but now they don't answer because they're on the phone with another plumber. You leave a voicemail. They call you back at 8:45 AM, but now you're back under a sink and can't answer.

This phone tag game is frustrating for everyone, and it usually ends with the customer hiring whoever actually spoke to a human being first.

In Sundre's service area, this problem gets worse because of travel time. If you're 20 minutes outside town working on a ranch water system, that 20-minute callback delay might actually be 45 minutes or an hour before you can have a real conversation with the new customer. By then, they've definitely moved on.

The ranching community around Sundre also tends to be pretty straightforward in how they do business. They want to talk to someone, get a straight answer about availability and pricing, and make a decision. The back-and-forth of voicemail tag doesn't fit how they prefer to handle problems.

Let's put some real numbers on this. Say you're a solo plumber or small plumbing business in Sundre. You probably get 10-15 calls per day during busy season. If 80% of callers who reach voicemail don't leave messages, and you miss 30% of your calls because you're working, here's the math:

• 15 calls per day
• 5 calls go to voicemail (you miss 1/3 because you're working)
• 4 of those 5 callers hang up without leaving a message
• 1 leaves a message, but there's a delay in callback

So you're potentially losing 4 customers per day to voicemail hang-ups. Even if only half of those would have booked service, and the average job is $300, that's $600 per day in lost revenue. Over a busy month, that's $18,000.

That's probably a conservative estimate, too. Emergency calls tend to be worth more than routine service calls, and the customers you lose to voicemail are often the ones with urgent, high-value problems.

For a small business in a town of 3,000 people, losing $18,000 per month to something as simple as voicemail is a serious problem. That's money that could go toward better equipment, a second truck, or hiring help.

So what should you do instead? There are several options that work better than voicemail for plumbers:

Live answering services are probably the most straightforward solution. You can hire a service that answers your phone with your business name, takes basic information about the call, and either patches emergency calls through to you or schedules non-emergency appointments. Good services cost $200-400 per month, which is probably less than you lose to voicemail in a week.

AI answering systems are getting better and cheaper. These can handle basic screening, and forward truly urgent calls to you immediately. They're available 24/7 and don't take sick days.

A dedicated business line that your partner, employee, or family member can answer during business hours. This works well for family plumbing businesses. The key is making sure whoever answers can take accurate information and knows how to prioritize emergency calls.

Call forwarding to your cell phone with a different ringtone for business calls. This ensures you at least know it's a business call when your phone rings, even if you can't always answer immediately.

The plumbers in Sundre who stay consistently busy have figured this out already. Most of them either answer their phones personally as much as possible, or they've invested in some kind of answering solution.

Some have their spouse or family member handle the phone during peak hours. Others use simple answering services that cost less than $300 per month but capture way more leads than voicemail ever did.

The smart ones also recognize that in Sundre's service area, being available matters more than having the lowest prices. Ranchers and rural property owners will pay more for a plumber who actually answers the phone and shows up when they say they will.

A few plumbers have started using automated text responses that go out immediately when they miss a call, asking customers to text their emergency details. This works well for the younger demographics and gives customers a way to communicate even when voice calls aren't practical.

Voicemail made sense when customers had fewer options and were willing to wait longer for service. In 2024, in a service area as spread out as Sundre and Mountain View County, it's costing you more money than you realize.

The solution doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. It just has to put a human voice on the other end of the line more often than a recording. Whether that's you, a family member, an answering service, or even a good AI system, anything is better than sending 80% of your potential customers straight to voicemail.

Your phone is your most important business tool. It's time to treat it like one.