Missed call and phone-answering statistics for small businesses

Why phone statistics matter for small businesses

If you run a small business, the phone is rarely a neutral tool. It is either a source of new work or a source of friction. A missed call can mean a lost booking, a delayed quote, or a customer who simply rings the next business on their list.

This page gathers the UK statistics that put phone answering in context. It covers how many small businesses exist, how they use mobile phones, what they spend, and how the telephone compares with other contact channels. Every figure is cited to the official source it came from.

A note on what the data does and does not show: the UK government publishes detailed statistics on business population and on how small businesses interact with HMRC. It does not publish a single official figure for "the percentage of calls small businesses miss". Where that specific number is absent from the sources, this page says so rather than inventing one.

How many small businesses are there in the UK?

The scale of the small business sector is the starting point for any conversation about missed calls. More small businesses means more owner-run operations where the person answering the phone is also the person doing the work.

At the start of 2025, there were 5.7 million private sector businesses in the UK (5,690,265)¹. Of these, 5.64 million were small businesses with 0 to 49 employees, which is 99.18% of the total business population¹. Medium-sized businesses (50 to 249 employees) numbered 38,435, and large businesses (250 or more employees) numbered just 8,335¹.

The Federation of Small Businesses summarises the same official data, noting that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for 99.9% of the business population². Small businesses specifically employed 13.1 million people, or 47% of total employment, with a turnover of £1.9 trillion².

The practical point: the overwhelming majority of UK businesses are small enough that phone answering is not a dedicated department. It is one person, often the owner, fitting calls around everything else.

Sole traders and the self-employed

The business population is heavily weighted towards businesses with no employees at all. In 2025, 4.3 million businesses (75%) did not employ anyone aside from the owners, while 1.4 million (25%) had employees¹.

The Federation of Small Businesses breaks this down further: 3.2 million sole proprietorships (57% of the population), 2.1 million actively trading companies (37%), and 368,000 ordinary partnerships (6%)².

For a sole trader, there is no receptionist and no colleague to cover the phone. Every call competes with the work itself.

How do small businesses use mobile phones?

The most directly relevant data on phone use among small businesses comes from the Shared Rural Network Wellbeing Survey, commissioned by Building Digital UK and conducted by Ipsos³. The survey covered 1,285 residents of households and businesses in rural areas that will benefit from improved 4G coverage³.

Among the 184 participants who ran a business from their address, the survey asked what percentage of employees had a mobile phone provided by the business, or used their own phone for work with the cost reimbursed³. The findings:

More than half of rural business owners (54%) said no employees had a work-provided or reimbursed phone³. In other words, most staff in these businesses are using their own devices, or the business simply does not provide mobile phone support as a formal arrangement.

The survey also asked where employees worked. Among the small base of participants whose employees had mobile phones provided (61 respondents, a figure the report flags as small and to be interpreted with caution), 26% said employees mostly worked from the business premises but occasionally travelled, 23% said employees worked entirely at the premises, and 23% said employees mostly worked offsite³.

These figures are from a rural sample and are a baseline for a programme evaluation, not a national picture of all small businesses. But they are the closest official UK data available on how small businesses provision mobile phones, and they suggest that formal phone provision is far from universal.

What do small businesses spend on mobile phones?

The same survey asked employers about their monthly spend on mobile phones and mobile data access. Most employers (41%) reported spending between £10.01 and £50.00 per month³.

This is a modest figure, consistent with a sector where phone costs are absorbed informally rather than budgeted as a distinct line item.

How do small businesses contact HMRC, and what does it tell us about the phone?

The most detailed UK data on how small businesses use the telephone as a contact channel comes from HMRC research, not from call-tracking vendors. Two HMRC studies are directly relevant.

Costly channels: what they are and who uses them

HMRC classifies some contact channels as "costly" to run, including telephone, post, and online adviser-led web chat⁴. Non-costly channels include digital self-service options.

In HMRC's research into channel usage among small businesses, close to half (46%) of small businesses had contacted HMRC via a costly channel within the last 12 months, while 7 in 10 (68%) had used non-costly channels⁴. Just under 2 in 5 (37%) had used a combination of both⁴.

The research also found that small businesses which outsourced all of their finance work were more likely to use costly channels (52%) than small businesses overall (46%)⁴.

The reasons small businesses reach for the phone matter. In payment scenarios, challenging a penalty was the largest driver of costly channel use, with 44% of small businesses selecting telephone to challenge a penalty, compared with 8% who searched on HMRC's website⁴.

This is a useful proxy for customer behaviour generally: when something is urgent, consequential, or emotionally charged, people pick up the phone. The same dynamic applies to customers ringing a small business about a booking, a problem, or a quote.

How the telephone compares with other channels

HMRC asked small businesses that had used costly channels in the last 12 months to rate their experience. The results show the telephone's particular strengths⁴:

The telephone was not rated the easiest channel to use: web chat scored higher on "was easy to do" (66% vs 41%)⁴. But among costly channels, the telephone was rated highest on the three measures that matter most for actually getting a problem solved: providing information that was easy to understand (60%), providing accurate information (64%), and helping to resolve the query (63%)⁴.

HMRC's own summary of the research states that, of the costly channels, telephone was most highly rated by small businesses for getting information quickly, being easy to understand, and helping to resolve the query⁴.

The implication for small businesses is clear. Customers who ring you are often choosing the channel they believe will resolve their issue fastest. If that call goes unanswered, they are not getting the experience they selected the phone for.

What the data does not tell us

It is worth being precise about the limits of the available official statistics.

There is no single UK government figure for the percentage of calls to small businesses that go unanswered, or for the average revenue lost per missed call. Those numbers, when they appear in marketing material, typically come from vendor surveys or commercial call-tracking data, not from official statistics. This page does not cite them because the sources provided here do not contain them.

What the official data does establish is the context: a business population dominated by very small, often owner-only operations^1,2, where formal phone provision is patchy³, and where the telephone remains the channel people choose when they need a query resolved⁴.

How to use these statistics

These figures are most useful as context, not as a precise calculator. If you are making a case for changing how your business handles calls, the numbers support a few specific points.

First, the scale argument: with 5.64 million small businesses in the UK, most of them with no employees, the businesses you compete with are almost certainly in the same position you are: calls fitted around the work^1,2.

Second, the behaviour argument: people use the phone when something matters to them. HMRC's data shows that, among costly channels, telephone was rated highest for providing accurate information and resolving queries⁴. A customer who rings you is often a customer who wants an answer now.

Third, the cost argument: most small employers spend between £10.01 and £50.00 a month on mobile phones and data³. That is the baseline against which any phone-answering solution, human or automated, is judged.

For a fuller discussion of what a missed call costs, see our guide on what a missed call costs a small business and our piece on what percentage of calls to small businesses go unanswered.

How to cite this page

If you want to reference these statistics, the underlying sources are:

• Department for Business and Trade, Business population estimates for the UK and regions 2025¹
• Federation of Small Businesses, UK small business statistics²
• Building Digital UK, Shared Rural Network Wellbeing Survey (2026)³
• HMRC, Costly Channels usage amongst Small Businesses (2025)⁴

Cite the original source for any specific figure, and note the date you accessed it.