Ask an OTC desk what a missed call costs and you'll hear "a phone call." Wrong unit. A missed client inquiry is a trade — with spread revenue — executing with a competitor, plus the lifetime value of a client relationship that now belongs to someone else. Let's do the math honestly, with every estimate labeled as one.

Step 1: what is a client trade worth? OTC economics vary enormously [ESTIMATE — varies by desk, size, and pair]: spreads on major pairs might run 0.1–1%+ depending on size and market conditions; a single $100K trade at a 0.5% spread is $500 in gross revenue; larger blocks scale from there. Client lifetime — repeat trades over months — multiplies a single trade many times over. For the worked example below, we'll use a conservative $400 average gross per converted inquiry [ESTIMATE]. Your numbers will differ — the method is what matters.

Step 2: how many inquiries go unanswered? Without tracking, invisible. Desks are busiest during volatility — exactly when staff are overwhelmed and calls go unanswered. After hours, the overwhelming majority of calls go unanswered. And a meaningful share of OTC inquiries arrive outside business hours, because crypto clients operate across every time zone [ESTIMATE].

Step 3: the worked example — a hypothetical desk [ESTIMATE, illustrative only]: 100 inbound inquiry calls per month; 20% go unanswered during spikes and off-hours (20 calls); of those, 50% would have traded with someone (10 trades); your desk recovers none of them. 10 × $400 average gross = $4,000/month in spread revenue walking away. That's $48,000 a year [ESTIMATE] — before counting client lifetime value, which multiplies it further. Even at half our inputs, the number justifies action. And the asymmetry is stark: one recovered large trade can pay for a year of coverage.

What the monthly figure misses: client lifetime — a trader who finds a responsive desk brings repeat flow for months; reputation — in OTC, responsiveness is the product, and "they never pick up" travels fast in tight trading communities; your traders' time — traders doing phone tag aren't trading; and timing — missed inquiries cluster during volatility, the highest-value moments.

How to measure your own in two weeks: enable call tracking on your desk's inbound number; tag new-client vs. existing-client inquiries; count the after-hours and spike-time share; apply your actual average spread per converted trade; multiply and decide. If the figure exceeds a few hundred dollars a month, recovery pays for itself many times over. Recovering just 2 of those 20 missed inquiries a month at $400 each is $800/month [ESTIMATE] — against an AI receptionist at ~$297/month. Then call +1 (659) 399-0158 and ask our AI how it would have handled your last missed inquiry.