Journal · 5 min read
How fast should you reply to an enquiry? Faster than you think.
Most owners believe their business replies to enquiries quickly. Very few have measured it. When they do, the answer is usually measured in hours or days, not minutes, and the firm that replied first has often already booked the meeting.
What the research says
A study published in Harvard Business Review looked at 1.25 million sales leads received by 42 companies, and sent test enquiries to 2,241 more. Firms that contacted a potential customer within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker as firms that waited even one hour longer. Against firms that waited a day or more, they were more than sixty times as likely.
The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review
The reason is simple. People who send an enquiry usually send several at once. The first credible reply sets the frame, and everyone after it is competing for second place.
How to measure your own reply time
- Send an enquiry through your own website form from a personal email, at a busy time of day, and note when the first human reply arrives.
- Repeat it after hours and on a weekend.
- Call your main number at lunchtime and see whether it is answered.
- Do the same for three competitors. The gap is the number that matters.
Five fixes that work
- Send an instant reply that is useful, with real next steps, prices or a booking link, not a generic thank you.
- Route every enquiry to a named owner with a target reply time, not a shared inbox.
- Cover the hours your buyers actually enquire, which often includes evenings.
- Make booking a call possible in one click from the first reply.
- Use an agent to answer common questions and book meetings, and hand the rest to a person within minutes.
See how you compare
Karyu Intelligence measures reply time for every firm in a sector and city by mystery shopping their forms, email and phone lines the same way, so you can see where you stand against named competitors.