Reply to a new enquiry within the hour, and sooner if you can. That is the plain answer, and it comes from the best independent study on the subject. The harder part is knowing how fast you reply today, because most owners have never measured it.
This guide covers what the research found, which popular figures to treat with care, how to measure your own reply time in a week, and how to set a target that staff can meet without living on their phones.
What the research found
In 2011, three researchers published a study in Harvard Business Review on how fast companies answer web enquiries. They sent a test lead through the websites of 2,241 US companies and timed the replies.[1]
Only 37% replied within an hour. Another 16% replied within 1 to 24 hours, and 24% took longer than a day. Almost a quarter (23%) never replied at all. Among companies that did reply within 30 days, the average wait was 42 hours.[1]
The same team then looked at 1.25 million real sales leads handled by 42 companies. Firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as firms that tried even an hour later. Against firms that waited 24 hours or more, they were more than 60 times as likely.[1]
Those companies were mostly larger firms selling to other businesses, not salons or plumbers. The pattern still fits what owners see every day. A person who fills in a form is thinking about the problem right now. An hour later they may have booked someone else, or stopped caring.
The 5-minute figure, and why we hold it loosely
You will often read that replying within 5 minutes makes a lead many times more likely to convert than replying within 30. That claim traces to a 2007 lead response study run with a company that sold lead-response software.[2] It may be right. But the people paying for the study sold the cure, and the method is hard to check.
We do not plan around it. The hour mark from the HBR work is strong enough on its own, and it gives you a target you can reach with ordinary staff and a few automatic messages.
Measure your own reply time this week
Before you change anything, find out where you stand. It takes about 20 minutes a day for one week.
- List every new enquiry. Web forms, missed calls from unknown numbers, texts, emails, social messages, and chat. Note the time each one arrived.
- Note the first real reply. A person or an AI answering the question counts. An automatic "we got your message" does not, because it does not move the customer forward.
- Work out the gap for each one. Minutes from arrival to first real reply. Mark any you never answered.
- Split by hours. Separate enquiries that came in during opening hours from those that came in after closing. The two numbers are usually very different.
At the end of the week you will have three figures. The share answered within an hour, the median reply time, and the share never answered. Write them down. They are your starting point.
If your enquiries arrive in five different apps, this is the slowest part of the job. That is a finding in itself. Teams that work from one shared inbox can see every channel in one list, which makes both the measuring and the replying faster.
Auto-replies that help, and ones that annoy
An automatic reply is useful when it gives the customer something they can act on. It is noise when it only says you will be in touch.
- Helpful: a text back after a missed call that asks what they need and offers a booking link.
- Helpful: a reply to a quote form that confirms the details, says when a person will call, and gives a number to ring if it is urgent.
- Annoying: a generic "thanks for your enquiry" email that arrives in seconds and is followed by nothing for two days.
- Annoying: several automatic messages in a row before anyone has read what the customer asked.
A good rule is that every automatic reply should either answer the question, book the visit, or set a clear time for a person to follow up. Our guide to missed-call text back has example wording. Automations can send these replies and assign the follow-up task to the right person at the same moment.
Set a target your team can keep
A target only works if staff can hit it on a busy Tuesday. Start from your measured week and pick something one step better.
- Pick one number. For example, every enquiry during opening hours gets a real reply within 60 minutes. Keep it to one rule people can remember.
- Name an owner per channel. Someone is responsible for the inbox each hour of the day. When everyone owns it, no one does.
- Cover the closed hours differently. Overnight, a fast acknowledgement with a booking link, then a person first thing in the morning. Some businesses add an AI that answers messages and calls after hours.
- Review it monthly. Look at the share answered within the hour and the share never answered. Celebrate the second number falling to zero before you chase the first.
A target to start with: no enquiry goes unanswered, and every enquiry during opening hours gets a real reply within the hour.
Where reply speed matters most
Speed matters most where the customer is comparing several businesses at once. A homeowner with a burst pipe rings the next plumber if the first one does not pick up. See how a home services business handles this. A buyer sending enquiries on three listings books a viewing with whoever answers first, which is why estate agents treat the first hour as part of the sale.
It matters less where the customer has already chosen you, such as an existing client booking a routine visit. That is a reason to sort new enquiries from existing customers in your inbox, so the new ones go to the top.
Track it after the change
Once the target is set, check the same three figures each month. This is much easier when every channel lands in one place. In our inbox you can set a reply time target, get an alert when a reply is running late, and see in the reports how the team is doing over time, so you can tell whether the evening gap closed or moved somewhere else.
Faster replies are not the whole answer. A fast reply that does not help is still a lost lead. But slow replies lose people before you have had a chance to help at all, and the research says the first hour is where most of that loss happens.
Want to see your own reply times? Book a walkthrough and we will show you how the inbox measures them, or read what a missed call costs.
Sources
- The Short Life of Online Sales LeadsOldroyd, McElheran, and Elkington, Harvard Business Review, March 2011
- Lead response management studyAn academic researcher with a company that sold lead-response software, 2007Cited only to explain why we do not plan around it.