Missed inbound call
A sales call the team never handled: it rang out, went to voicemail, was abandoned in a queue or died on hold.
Use this definition in team training or when clarifying a sales note.
Definition
A missed inbound call is any call from a potential customer that did not reach someone who could help. That covers calls that rang unanswered, calls that dropped to voicemail during business hours, calls abandoned while waiting in a queue, and calls that were answered, placed on hold and then given up on.
Missed calls cluster predictably: the first half hour after opening, the lunch hour, the end of the day and shift changes.
Why it matters
This is the only major failure in the sale that has nothing to do with selling skill. The customer wanted to talk to you and could not. Missed calls are a coverage and routing problem, which makes them among the fastest things a manager can fix, usually with a schedule change rather than training.