Hold Rate
The share of booked appointments that actually happened.
On this page
Hold rate is the share of booked appointments that actually happened. It’s the last stage of the funnel and the one that decides how much of your pipeline turns into money.
The honesty check on the booking count
Booking is easy to inflate. Any answering service can put more names in more slots, and if half of them no-show, you’ve paid for wasted drive time and an empty afternoon.
Hold rate is the honesty check on the booking number, which is exactly why we report it next to it rather than burying it.
Booked with hold rate
Booked count alone
Booked with hold rate
How it is calculated
Held appointments divided by booked appointments, over the date range you’ve selected.
- Held
- The appointment went ahead. Nobody cancelled and the customer was there.
- No-show
- The slot arrived and the job didn't happen — cancelled late, or nobody home.
- Not yet counted
- An appointment still in the future. It sits in pipeline and doesn't affect hold rate either way.
Future bookings don't drag it down
The 60% target
The dashboard shows hold rate against a 60% line. That’s a deliberately achievable floor, not an aspiration.
- Above 80%
- Excellent. Your confirmations and slot timing are working.
- 60% to 80%
- Healthy. Normal for most home-services work.
- Below 60%
- Worth attention. At this level you're losing more than a third of what you booked.
Why appointments don’t hold
- The slot was too far out. The further ahead a booking sits, the more time the customer has to solve the problem another way.
- The problem went away. An intermittent fault that stops recurring is the single most common cancellation in the trades.
- They booked several businesses. Common in emergencies — whoever arrives first gets the work.
- No confirmation. A booking made nine days ago with no reminder is a booking the customer has forgotten.
- The expectation didn’t match. If the caller expected a free quote and there’s a call-out fee, they cancel at the door.
How to improve it
- 1
Shorten the gap to the appointment
The strongest lever by a distance. Same-week slots hold far better than next-week ones.
- 2
Turn on reminders
A confirmation when it’s booked and a reminder the day before recovers a meaningful share of no-shows on its own.
- 3
Be clear about fees on the call
State the call-out fee in Services so the caller hears it while booking, not when your van pulls up.
- 4
Listen to three that no-showed
Open them in Conversations. Hesitation in the customer’s voice at the booking moment is usually audible.
Reading it together
It needs to be marked as held. If your calendar is connected, that happens automatically once the appointment passes without cancellation; otherwise it can be marked on the booking itself.