Recovered Revenue
The headline number, and exactly how it's calculated.
On this page
Recovered revenue is the closed value of every appointment your receptionist booked that you actually kept. It’s the number we ask you to judge us on.
It is deliberately conservative
The number we ask to be judged on
Every answering service can show you a call count. A call count doesn’t pay wages. The only honest test of whether a front desk is worth having is whether the work it booked turned up, so that’s what we report, and it’s why the figure is usually smaller than the one a competitor would quote you.
How it is calculated
- 1
A call comes in and is answered
It becomes a conversation in your account.
- 2
An appointment is booked
The value attached is your average job value for that service, or the specific value if one was captured on the call.
- 3
It sits in pipeline
Until the appointment date passes, that value shows under Pipeline — booked, not yet held.
- 4
The appointment holds
Nobody cancelled and nobody no-showed. Only now does the value move into recovered revenue.
What counts, and what doesn’t
- Counts: an appointment booked by your receptionist that went ahead.
- Counts: a job booked out of hours that held the following week.
- Doesn’t count: a lead captured but never booked.
- Doesn’t count: a booked appointment that was cancelled or no-showed.
- Doesn’t count: work you won some other way — a referral, a repeat customer who texted you directly.
Your average job value drives this number
The return multiple
Sitting next to recovered revenue is a multiple — what came back for every $1 you paid.
- Above 4×
- Strong. The phone is doing real work for you.
- 2× to 4×
- Healthy, with room to tune — usually in the booking step.
- Below 2×
- Something is leaking. Look at the funnel: is it call volume, or is it conversion?
Below the bars is the net figure — recovered revenue minus the monthly fee, so you can see the profit rather than the gross.
A month at Summit Comfort
33 appointments held. 21 were $480 diagnostics and repairs, 9 were $1,200 install jobs, 3 were $2,400 system replacements. That’s $28,080 recovered against a $680 monthly fee — a 41× return, and $27,400 net.
Another $3,600 sits in pipeline: three appointments booked for next week that haven’t happened yet.
When the number updates
The number updates as appointments hold. An appointment marked held today appears in this month’s figure immediately — there’s no overnight batch and no waiting for a month to close.
If the number looks wrong
Usually one of three things: recent bookings haven’t happened yet (check pipeline), appointments aren’t being marked as held, or your average job values are set below what you actually charge.
Check your average job values first — a service priced at your best-case job rather than your typical one will inflate every booking against it.
If the customer didn’t come through a call your receptionist answered, it won’t appear, and it shouldn’t. This screen measures what the phone recovered, not your total revenue.