Understanding Calls
The words we use, and what each one counts.
On this page
Every screen in your account uses the same handful of words, and each one means something precise. Ten minutes here will make the rest of the docs, and your dashboard — read easily.
Two words cause most of the confusion
Most confusion about the numbers comes from two words being used loosely: “lead” and “booked”. Once those are pinned down, the funnel stops being mysterious.
The words we use
- Conversation
- One call or one text exchange your receptionist handled. The basic unit — everything else is a conversation with something extra attached.
- Lead
- A conversation where contact details were captured. One conversation, one lead.
- Qualified
- Real work you take, from someone you'd serve. Not a wrong number, not a supplier, not a job outside your area.
- Booked
- The customer agreed a specific time and it went onto your calendar.
- Held
- The booked appointment actually happened. Nobody cancelled, nobody no-showed.
- No-show
- The appointment time passed and the job didn't happen.
- Escalated
- Handed to a person — transferred live, or flagged urgent for a callback.
Booked is not held, and held is not booked
The five outcomes
Every answered conversation ends up in exactly one of these:
- Booked
- Ended with an appointment. The outcome you're paying for.
- Qualified, not booked
- Real work, no commitment. Your best callback list by a distance.
- Escalated to you
- Needed a person, so it fetched one, or flagged it.
- Opted out
- The contact asked not to be messaged. Permanent, and enforced by the system.
- Info only
- Existing customers checking a time, suppliers, wrong numbers, sales calls. Usually the biggest slice, and that's normal.
The funnel, in order
The bars on your dashboard are these words stacked up. Each stage is a subset of the one above it.
Reading a real funnel
96 conversations → 34 qualified (35% continue) → 16 booked (47% continue) → 12 held (75% continue).
Every drop is normal. What you’re looking for is one drop much steeper than the others — that’s where the fixable problem is.
Money words
- Pipeline
- The value of appointments booked but not yet held. A promise, not money.
- Recovered revenue
- The value of appointments that held. Real money, and the number to judge us on.
- Return multiple
- Recovered revenue divided by what you paid.
- Hold rate
- Held divided by booked. The honesty check on the booking count.
We never quote projected revenue
Yes — both are conversations and both can be qualified, booked and held. The funnel doesn’t care which channel the work came through.