In short
What is the average lead response time?
There is no single average. The two figures quoted most, 42 hours and 42 minutes, cannot be compared until you know who each one counted and what it called a reply. The number worth knowing is your own: the time from an inquiry arriving to the first reply a person writes.
On this page
Search for the average lead response time and two numbers come up: 42 hours and 42 minutes. They look like a typo of each other. Nothing shows they measure the same thing. Neither one tells you how fast your own business replies.
Where does the 42-hour figure come from?
It is usually credited to a Harvard Business Review article, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads," from March 2011. Who it counted and how it was measured were not checked for this page. Read them in the article itself.
Before you use the 42 hours, check four details in the article:
- Does it count companies or inquiries? If each company is one data point, a company with many slow replies counts the same as one with a single fast reply.
- Does it leave out companies that never replied? An inquiry nobody answered waited forever, and an average of reply times cannot include it.
- Is it a mean? A mean adds up every reply time and divides by how many there are. A few very slow replies pull it far up.
- It is from 2011. It shows how companies replied then, not now.
Where does the 42-minute figure come from?
This figure could not be traced to a study with a stated method.
Until its source is found, treat it as unknown. A number in minutes can come from very different counting. Each of these could produce one:
- A different group. For example, only businesses that replied the same day.
- The middle reply instead of the mean. The middle value ignores how slow the slowest replies were.
- Automatic emails counted as replies. Those arrive in seconds.
- Working hours only. Nights and weekends then count as zero.
- One company's own customers. A tool's users may already reply faster than most.
None of these is known to be true of the 42-minute figure. They are the questions to ask of any figure in minutes, like the 5-minute response stat, before you trust it.
Which figure means what?
Ask the same five questions of each number.
| Question to ask | 42 hours | 42 minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Who was counted? | Check the article | Not traced |
| What counted as a reply? | Check the article | Not traced |
| Mean or middle? | Check the article | Not traced |
| Are companies that never replied included? | Check the article | Not traced |
| When was it measured? | Published March 2011 | Not traced |
If you cannot fill in a column, you cannot compare that number with anything, including your own.
Why can the mean and the middle be so far apart?
Here is a made-up example. A business gets five inquiries in a week and replies in these times:
| Inquiry | Reply time |
|---|---|
| 1 | 10 minutes |
| 2 | 20 minutes |
| 3 | 30 minutes |
| 4 | 1 hour |
| 5 | 7 days |
The middle reply is 30 minutes. The mean is 34 hours, because the one week-long wait pulls it up.
Both numbers are correct. The middle shows what a typical visitor waits. The mean shows that someone waited a very long time. Quote either one as "the average" and the same business looks fast or slow.
Which number should you compare yourself with?
Neither. The businesses behind a published figure were counted differently, sell different things, and get different inquiries.
The 2011 figure is still useful for one thing. It is a reason to check your own replies for inquiries answered slowly or not at all. It is not a target to beat.
The speed-to-lead number worth tracking is your own, counted the same way every month.
How do you measure your own lead response time?
- List your last 30 inquiries. Use your inbox or your leads list.
- Write down when each one arrived and when a person first replied. Skip automatic emails.
- Count the ones nobody replied to as their own number. Do not drop them.
- Find the middle reply. Sort the times from fastest to slowest and take the one in the middle.
- Count how many got a reply within one hour. It is a simple number to watch from month to month.
Fast replies matter most for the inquiries that fit your work best. In Qualiform, once you save your bookable hours or your own scheduling link on the Booking tab, a rule on the Routing tab can offer a time inside the conversation. A visitor who fits can then pick a time before anyone replies by hand. Your own first reply still depends on how fast you see the lead email or Slack message.
Lead response time is the gap between an inquiry arriving and the first reply a person writes to it. To decide which inquiries deserve the fastest reply, read the guide to qualifying leads from your contact form, then set what happens at each score with the lead routing rules for a small service business.
Common questions
Does an automatic email count as a reply?
Not for this measure. An automatic email tells the visitor their message arrived. It does not answer their question. Time the first reply a person wrote.
Should nights and weekends count toward response time?
Count them, because the visitor waits through them too. If you only reply during working hours, also track a second number in working hours, so you can see both.