76% of French businesses have no employee to answer the phone

A plumber on a job, a physiotherapist with a patient, a consultant in a meeting: when a business has no staff, the phone rings while the owner is working. Most French businesses are in exactly that position.

What Insee counts

In 2024, Insee counted 5,987,885 economically active legal units in France in industry, construction, trade and services. 4,562,923 of them had no salaried employee: 76.2%. The year before, the count was 4,317,601 out of 5,741,792.

Insee already noted in 2022 that three quarters of microenterprises have no employee at all.

The real opening hours of a one-person business

For a business with no staff, “opening hours” means the hours when the owner is free to answer, which is fewer than the hours they work. Every hour spent with a client is an hour when a website visitor with a question gets no reply.

Three ways to answer without stopping work

• Say when you will call back: a clear message on your site or voicemail beats silence.
• Batch your call backs: set two slots a day to return calls and enquiries, and show them on your site.
• Let a chat agent take the first step: it answers common questions straight away and collects the details you need to call back, without interrupting you.