EmpfangoThe short answer
A site manager in commercial cleaning who takes twelve calls a day spends around 200 hours a year on the phone. At €35 employer cost per hour, that is roughly €7,000 per year and site manager, just for answering the calls.
Sick leave in the cleaning industry drives this number. 71.3% of German cleaning companies report higher sick leave since sick notes became available by phone; in Bavaria, cleaning occupations topped all occupational groups in 2023 with 29.1 days of absence per employee. Each of those absences is a phone call, usually between five and seven in the morning, usually to the site manager. This article works out what that costs and shows which part an AI phone assistant takes over, and which part it does not.
The numbers: sick leave and staffing in commercial cleaning
Commercial cleaning is Germany's largest trade by employment, with 34,824 companies and €27.55 bn in revenue; 85% of costs are labour. Every hour a site manager spends on the phone instead of on site hits a tight margin.
- What the table does not contain: there is no industry statistic on how many calls a site manager takes per day. The values in the worked example below are therefore assumptions you can replace with your own numbers in the site manager phone time calculator.
- The 29.1 days figure is for Bavaria. The BIV industry report 2025 does not publish a nationwide number of sick days per employee.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Companies reporting higher sick leave since phone-based sick notes | 71.3% | BIV autumn survey 2024, cited by bkvfirmenservice.de |
| Sick leave in cleaning occupations, calendar days per employee (Bavaria 2023, highest of all occupational groups) | 29.1 days | BKK Bayern, cited by bkvfirmenservice.de |
| Labour cost share of revenue | 85% | BIV industry report 2025 |
| Companies in the cleaning trade | 34,824 | BIV industry report 2025 |
| Employment relationships (2024) | 1,005,213 | BIV / rationell reinigen, 20 July 2026 |
| Industry revenue | €27.55 bn | BIV industry report 2025 |
| Unfilled positions | 48,000 | BIV 2025, cited by bkvfirmenservice.de |
Why the sick call ends up with the site manager
In commercial cleaning, sick calls almost always come in by phone, because at five in the morning a cleaner cannot reach anyone except the site manager or the owner.
The industry software vendor Blink describes the routine like this: “Especially in the early morning hours it means: find a replacement, rearrange shifts or step in yourself. It is not unusual for [site managers] to start their day with several phone calls.” (Blink blog “Objektleiter”, 8 May 2025). The trade magazine rationell reinigen noted in May 2026 that sick calls still run “the classic way”, by phone to the site manager (article “Intelligente Vernetzung”, 25 May 2026), and wrote in September 2026: “In many cleaning services, the phone remains the central hub of day-to-day business” (rationell reinigen, 28 Sept 2026, based on information from PlanD).
Then there is the structure of the industry. Around 2,500 guild member companies with an average of 250 employees hold about 85% of the market; the remaining roughly 32,000 companies are small and micro businesses, often without office staff. There, the site manager or the owner is the switchboard, at five in the morning and at weekends too. Whoever is standing on site either takes the call or loses it to voicemail.
Then there is the time of day. Routine cleaning in offices and practices often starts before six, so the sick call arrives before the site manager's working day has begun. Anyone organising cover on the phone at 5:30 a.m. has used up their first hour before standing in the first site. That hour appears on no timesheet, but in every calculation.
The worked example: calls per day × minutes × hourly rate
A site manager's phone time comes down to three figures: calls per day, minutes per call and employer cost per hour. Twelve calls of four minutes each add up to 200 hours a year over 250 working days.
- Calls per day: 12 (assumption). This includes two or three sick calls early in the morning, questions like “Where am I working today?”, and calls from clients, applicants and suppliers.
- Minutes per call: 4 (assumption). A sick call without follow-up questions takes two minutes; with questions about the site, expected duration and keys it is closer to five.
- Phone time per day: 12 × 4 = 48 minutes. Per year over 250 working days: 200 hours.
- Employer cost per hour: €35 (assumption, including payroll costs; use your own figure).
- Cost per year and site manager: 200 hours × €35 = €7,000.
- With three site managers in the company: €21,000 per year, just for answering calls.
What the calculation leaves out
Pure talk time underestimates the loss, because every call interrupts a task on site, the search for a replacement only starts afterwards, and the report still has to be documented.
- Finding a replacement: calling three colleagues after a sick call until one says yes takes another 15 to 20 minutes per absence. That time stays with the dispatcher even with a phone assistant, but it starts from a complete report instead of a follow-up question.
- Interruption: the quality check on site stops, the conversation with the client breaks off. This cannot be measured in minutes, but it costs something every day.
- Voicemail: a sick call left on voicemail at 5:10 a.m. is heard at 6:30 a.m. The site was unstaffed at 6 a.m. and the client complains. The complaint is the next call, with its own documentation.
- Documentation: a sick call is health data under Art. 9 GDPR. According to an industry article by hagel-it (2026), “paper notes, wall calendars and group WhatsApp chats” are still the norm; none of that can be evidenced to a client.
- After 5 p.m. and at weekends: calls go to the owner's private mobile, or nowhere.
What Empfango takes over and what it does not
Empfango answers the sick call at five in the morning, captures name, callback number, site and expected duration, and reports it to the site manager via WhatsApp, Telegram or email. Finding a replacement stays with you.
The flow is the same as talking to a person, just without waiting and without voicemail. Empfango does not ask for a diagnosis, only whether and until when the person is unavailable. Every call starts with a fixed announcement that an AI assistant is speaking; processing runs in the EU and audio is not stored permanently. The transcript and summary are in the dashboard, so the report is documented before the site manager makes the first callback. If you use LiteLog, the report also lands in the LiteLog portal; that is not a requirement. Setup uses your existing number: via call forwarding, Empfango answers permanently or only when the site manager does not pick up.
For the calculation above this means: the 48 minutes of answering per day disappear, the replacement search remains. €7,000 of phone time per site manager and year compares with a fixed price from €99 per month, with no overage billing for minutes (see pricing). How the sick call flow works in detail is described under capturing sick calls by phone; the page AI phone assistant for cleaning companies covers the other call types. For a cost comparison with human answering services, see the article phone answering costs for a cleaning company.
Frequently asked questions
In Bavaria, cleaning occupations topped all occupational groups in 2023 with 29.1 calendar days per employee (BKK Bayern, cited by bkvfirmenservice.de). Nationwide, 71.3% of companies in the BIV autumn survey 2024 reported higher sick leave since sick notes became available by phone. The BIV industry report 2025 does not publish a nationwide figure for sick days per employee.
No. Empfango reports the absence in a structured way to the site manager or dispatcher; you decide who steps in. Empfango does not call replacement staff and does not change any roster.
There is no industry figure for this. The typical case: the message sits on voicemail, the site stays unstaffed in the morning, the client complains. In the site manager phone time calculator you can enter the calls, minutes and hourly rate of your own company.
Conclusion: automate the intake, keep the decision
Sick leave in commercial cleaning will not fall because a phone assistant answers the calls. But the 200 hours a year a site manager spends on intake can be shifted to callbacks and replacement searches, the work that actually needs a decision. Run the numbers with your own values: calls per day, minutes per call, hourly rate. If the result is above €1,200 a year, the alternative is worth a look.