Guide · 3 min read
The 168-Hour Front Desk: How to Work Out What Your Phone Coverage Actually Costs
A business week is 168 hours. Set your real ones in step 1 and the four steps after it count the gap, price it, and draw it closed — every number from your own inputs, nothing stored.
Updated August 2026
Running totals from the values you set below.
Set your real hours
A business open 9 to 5 on weekdays posts 40 hours. Posted and covered are different numbers, and the gap between them is where the argument lives.
Your week, as one barPost your open hours, then subtract the lunch hour, the stretches when everyone is with someone and the phone rings out, and the days nobody backfills the desk. Every figure below follows these two numbers. A caller reaches a personPosted open, phone unansweredClosed — voicemail or nothingStarting values are the guide's example — a weekday 9–5 that loses the lunch hour — not a finding about your business. Nothing you enter here is stored or sent anywhere.
The rest is not idle time. It is the time your number is still being dialled.
See where the dark hours fall
Missed calls aren't spread evenly. They cluster, each cluster behaves differently, and only two of the four leave anything behind.
Your 133 dark hours, by where they fallThe same hours as the bar above, split into the four clusters they land in. Only the solid ones leave anything behind. Leaves a voicemail — you can count itLeaves nothing — no record at allAfter close80 hrsVoicemailThe biggest block — and more often a new customer researching than a regular rescheduling.
Weekends48 hrsVoicemailA voicemail left Saturday morning is answered Monday. That's 48 hours to call someone else.
Lunch and busy stretches5 hrsNo recordShort, frequent, and logged nowhere.
Overflow—No recordTwo calls at once. The second one waits; a caller comparing options doesn't.
Weeknights and weekends are counted from your posted hours on the assumption they fall Monday to Friday. The coverage clock takes a real Saturday.
A report of missed calls is a floor, not a count — half the gap never reaches it.
Price the gap with your own figures
Two numbers from your own records, one judgement call, one multiplication. A model you can't check is a model you won't act on.
The whole calculation, four stepsChange any number and the rest follow. 1Calls missed each week — from your phone logs, or a fortnight of counting2× 4.33 weeks, to get a month52 calls3× the share you'd expect to book if someone answered18 bookings4× the average value of a booking at your business$6,365 a monthThat's $76,381 a year against the hours you just measured.
Save or share this result →An estimate from your numbers, not a promise. Some missed callers ring back and some leave a voicemail — both push it down, neither to zero.
Compare the four ways to close it
Once the gap is hours and dollars, the four options compare. While it's a feeling, they don't.
The four options, on the same three questionsRead them against your own gap — 133 hours a week, and $6,365 a month by your figures. Cost shape What it covers What lands on you Another receptionist $38,010/yr median salary One shift, five days — minus lunch, breaks and time off Hiring, training, and covering the desk when they're away An answering service Usually per-minute or per-call The phone gets picked up; you usually get a message, not a booking The callback work — every message still has to be returned and booked Self-serve AI software Low sticker price An AI that answers — once you've configured, tested and tuned it yourself Your hours: prompts, testing, monitoring, fixing odd behaviour — ongoing A managed service One monthly rate for the whole thing The hours the rate covers, run for you rather than by you Deciding whether the gap you just measured is worth the rate Another receptionist
Cost shape$38,010/yr median salaryWhat it coversOne shift, five days — minus lunch, breaks and time offWhat lands on youHiring, training, and covering the desk when they're awayAn answering service
Cost shapeUsually per-minute or per-callWhat it coversThe phone gets picked up; you usually get a message, not a bookingWhat lands on youThe callback work — every message still has to be returned and bookedSelf-serve AI software
Cost shapeLow sticker priceWhat it coversAn AI that answers — once you've configured, tested and tuned it yourselfWhat lands on youYour hours: prompts, testing, monitoring, fixing odd behaviour — ongoingA managed service
Cost shapeOne monthly rate for the whole thingWhat it coversThe hours the rate covers, run for you rather than by youWhat lands on youDeciding whether the gap you just measured is worth the rateSalary figure: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics median for receptionists, May 2024 — before payroll taxes, benefits and rehiring. The other three are described by how they bill; published prices in this category vary too widely to quote one.
Which one is right depends on the gap you just measured — which is why measuring it first is the actual advice here.
See the week with the gap closed
The same week, drawn twice: as you measured it, and with the phone answered around the clock.
The same week, answeredYour week as you just measured it, against the identical week with the phone answered around the clock. The bracket is the difference. Your desk today
Answered around the clock
Those 133 hours are where the $6,365 a month you estimated in step 3 is sitting.
See your own week, hour by hour →The lower bar is coverage — the hours a caller reaches someone — not a claim about what happens on any one call. Luna Front answers 24 hours a day, every day; what a given call books depends on the caller and on your business.
You've measured the gap. Now hear it closed.
Bring the numbers you just produced to a 15-minute consultation and we'll talk through what covering those hours looks like for your business — or listen to Luna Front answer a call first.