300 Missed Calls a Month in Dunedin: What One Property Manager Did About It

Sam Hutton runs a property management business in Dunedin. 380 doors across South Dunedin, Mornington, North East Valley, and a small block in Mosgiel. Three full-time property managers, one part-time admin, one senior partner who still owns the relationships with the long-term landlords from the 1990s.

In March he opened the Pipedrive call analytics tab for the first time in six months. He had been meaning to look at it. The number that stopped him: 300.

300 inbound calls in March that went to voicemail or got the engaged tone. Out of 1,140 calls received total. A 26% miss rate.

He had assumed it was 5% maybe 8%. Three times that.

What the 300 actually were

Sam pulled the call log into a spreadsheet and listened back to the first 50 voicemails (or the first 50 numbers and called them back, where there was no voicemail).

The breakdown:

The 11 new-tenant enquiries that went to voicemail. Of those 11, 4 had already signed somewhere else by the time Sam called them back the next morning. Each of those 4 represented roughly $1,200 in management fees over the average tenancy. So $4,800 of revenue lost in one month from one call type.

The 4 new-landlord enquiries. Two had already gone with the firm two streets over by the time the callback happened on Tuesday. Each lost relationship was worth $3,500 to $8,000 a year, ongoing. So somewhere between $7,000 and $16,000 of annualised future revenue lost in March alone.

What each one was worth

Multiplying the sample of 50 up to 300:

Total cost of March's missed calls: somewhere between $90,000 and $130,000 in lost or escalated revenue, by Sam's estimate. He stopped counting and started looking for a fix.

Why it was 300 not 50

The Otago factor: most maintenance and tenancy calls happen 5pm to 8pm. After the property managers had gone home. Tenants ring after work. Landlords ring after their day jobs.

The team rotation factor: each property manager handles their own portfolio, but they all shared one main number. If three of them were on calls at once, the fourth call rolled to voicemail. This happened most weekday mornings between 9am and 11am.

The Friday-Saturday factor: Sam's team did not work weekends in March. 38 calls came in across 5 weekend periods. All went to voicemail. 14 had Saturday morning urgency (smoke alarm beeping, hot water cylinder leak, lockout). By Monday morning when the team called back, 11 had been resolved by the tenant calling someone else (locksmith, tradesman, the landlord directly). Trust damage on 11 tenancies in one month.

What he did

Sam called Waboom on a Wednesday morning. By the following Tuesday his agent was live on a new number that forwarded from his main line whenever it was busy or after-hours. The agent:

Two integrations: Property Tree (the property management system) and Pipedrive (for new-business pipeline). Three days of configuration. Live by Tuesday.

What happened six weeks later

April-May call analytics:

Estimated annualised value:

Total estimated annualised value: $231,000.

Cost of the Waboom voice agent at Sam's call volume (about 1,200 calls a month): $600/month plus per-minute fees, totalling $7,200 a year.

The ROI is the kind of number Sam's senior partner did not believe until they ran the second month of analytics.

What this story is and is not

This story is one Otago property management business with one specific call mix. The numbers are not universal. A Whangārei plumber will see a different breakdown. A Hamilton home-care provider will see different escalation costs (we covered that story separately). A Sydney mortgage brokerage will look completely different.

What is universal: most NZ and AU service businesses are missing more calls than they think, the missed calls cost more than they think, and they typically have not run the spreadsheet exercise to check. The Pipedrive call analytics tab (or your CRM equivalent) is free. Open it for the last 60 days. Pick 30 missed calls at random. Listen back. Add up what they were worth.

If the answer is uncomfortable, the fix is no longer expensive. We covered the 2026 pricing breakdown and what separates Waboom from other AI voice platforms. The platform answers calls Sam used to lose. He still owns the relationships with his long-term landlords. The agent does the receptionist work neither he nor his team can scale.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sam Hutton a real person?

The story is composite. The numbers, the call breakdown, the property type and location, and the integration choices are based on real Dunedin and Otago property management deployments we run. We anonymise the specific business at the client's request. Where you see a name in our case studies, it is either composited or used with explicit permission.

Are the missed-call costs realistic?

Yes. The $1,200 average new-tenant management fee is the NZ Property Management industry baseline. The $5,000 average new-landlord annual fee is mid-range for South Island independent firms. The 36% lost-to-competitor rate on next-day callbacks is consistent with NZ Property Investors Federation surveys of vacancy-listing enquiry behaviour.

Would the same story work for Auckland?

The numbers would be larger. Auckland average annual management fees per door run higher ($1,500 to $2,200). Vacancy-fill enquiry volume per listing is higher because of population density. The lost-to-competitor rate is higher (more competing firms in the same suburb). For Auckland the equivalent monthly ROI would likely be 50-80% higher than Sam's Dunedin number.

What does the agent cost at Sam's volume?

About $600/month base plus per-minute fees, around $7,200 a year. We covered the full pricing model in the 2026 pricing breakdown.

Can my CRM not just send me an alert when a call is missed?

It can, but the alert arrives 2 to 24 hours later (depending on when you check it). The tenant or new client has already moved on. The point of the AI agent is to answer in 1.5 seconds and complete the work right then. Alerts are a worse-version of the answer.