Speed to lead: what it is and how to improve it

Speed to lead is how long a new lead waits before someone at your company actually answers them. The clock starts when the lead arrives (a web form, a booking request, a text, a missed call, a referral typed in by the office) and stops at the first real human reply: a call that connects, a typed text, a written email or a booked appointment.

It is also called lead response time. The words matter less than the rule: measure from when the lead arrived, not from when somebody noticed it. Most offices that think they answer in ten minutes are measuring from the moment someone opened the lead, which hides the part of the wait that loses jobs.

Because a homeowner who fills in one form is usually filling in two or three. The first company that reaches them gets the conversation, the site visit and very often the job. The research on this is old, but its method is public and its direction has held up.

What the studies actually found

• Most companies answer slowly. A Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 US companies sent each a web lead and timed the reply. 37% answered within an hour, 16% within one to 24 hours, 24% took longer than 24 hours and 23% never answered at all. Among those that replied within 30 days, the average wait was 42 hours.
• The first hour is worth a lot. The same authors looked at 1.25 million leads at 42 US companies. Companies that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as those that waited an hour or more, and more than 60 times as likely as those that waited 24 hours or longer.
• The first five minutes are worth the most. The Lead Response Management study, run with one of the same researchers on more than 15,000 leads and over 100,000 call attempts, found the odds of qualifying a lead fell 21 times when the response came at 30 minutes instead of 5, and fell four times between 5 and 10 minutes.

Why home service is even more sensitive

• The need is specific and local. A homeowner wants the driveway cleaned before a party, or the gutters done before the rain. Whoever can say "yes, Thursday" first usually wins.
• Most leads are comparing a few companies. They are not loyal to anyone yet. A quick, friendly answer is the first thing they can judge you on.
• Paid lead sources reward fast replies. Google says responsiveness to customer inquiries is one of the things that affects how its Local Services Ads rank, and that missed calls may count against it. A slow answer can cost you the lead and your placement.
• The marketing money is spent either way. A lead you paid for and answered tomorrow is money spent on a competitor's sale.

Aim for a human reply within 5 business minutes on every lead that arrives while the office is open, and within the first 15 minutes of the next business day for leads that arrive after hours. Then track the share of leads that hit the target, not just the average.

Use the median (the middle lead) and the share within 5 minutes together. An average hides problems: one lead answered in 3 seconds and one answered in 3 hours average out to an hour and a half, which describes neither.

Count only the minutes your office was open between the lead arriving and the first human reply. Otherwise a lead that comes in at 11 PM makes the office look nine hours late when nobody could have answered it.

speed to lead (business minutes) = open minutes between arrival and first human reply
share on target = leads answered within 5 business minutes ÷ leads that got a reply
waiting = leads with no human reply yet (count them, oldest first)

Three worked examples

An invented company, Palmetto Exterior Care, keeps office hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday to Friday.

The Friday lead is the one to talk about at the Monday meeting. It arrived with ten minutes of the day left and waited all weekend. Leads that arrive near closing time deserve their own rule: whoever has the inbox stays until each one has a reply.

Mistakes that make the number look better than it is

• Measuring from when someone opened the lead, not from when it arrived.
• Counting an automatic reply as the response. It is fine to send one, but the clock keeps running until a person answers.
• Leaving out leads nobody answered. Count them as waiting, or the leads you lost completely vanish from the number.
• Ignoring leads added by hand. A referral the office types in at 3 PM may have called at 9 AM. Record the time the customer actually reached out.
• One number for every channel. Calls are often answered fast and web forms slowly. Split the number by lead source once a month.

Pull the last 30 days of leads from wherever they live today and write down two times for each: when it arrived and when a person first replied. Twenty or thirty leads is enough to see the pattern.

1. List every lead from the last 30 days: name, source, and the date and time it arrived (form timestamp, text time, call log).
2. Find the first human reply for each one in your sent texts, sent email and call log.
3. Work out business minutes for each lead using your office hours.
4. Sort from slowest to fastest. Look at the slowest five and write down why each one waited.
5. Work out the median and the share answered within 5 business minutes.
6. Mark which leads became booked jobs, then compare the fast half with the slow half.

The speed-to-lead calculator does the arithmetic and shows roughly what slow replies cost at your own close rate and average ticket.

By making one named person responsible for new leads at every minute of the day, and by making waiting leads impossible to miss. Slow replies in a busy office are rarely laziness. They are usually two people each assuming the other one has it.

1. Name a lead owner for each part of the day. "Maria has new leads 8 to 12, Devon 12 to 5" is enough. Write it down. Cover lunch and the last hour of the day on purpose.
2. New leads land in one place. Forms, booking requests, texts and missed calls should all show up in one list, not three inboxes and somebody's personal phone.
3. Reply first, then qualify. The first message can be short: "Hi Lena, this is Maria at Palmetto Exterior Care. Thanks for asking about the driveway. Is now a good time for a quick call?" The questions come after.
4. Hand-offs go with a note. If the person who replied can't finish (the customer wants the owner, or a big commercial job needs a sales rep), the lead moves to a named person with what was said, and the customer is told who will call.
5. Show the waiting count where people work. A number in a report nobody opens changes nothing. The count of leads waiting right now belongs on the screen the office uses all day.
6. Review the slowest five every week. Not to blame anyone: to find the gap (lunch, a busy Monday, a source nobody checks) and fix the rota.

The full playbook for several people sharing texts and calls is in running a shared office inbox.

Give the customer something useful at once, then make the first human reply of the morning go to them. An after-hours lead is not lost, but every company it contacted will try to reach it first thing.

• Let them book a time themselves. An online booking page with real open times turns a 9 PM form into an appointment without anyone at the office awake.
• Send an honest automatic reply. Say when you open and who will call. Don't pretend a person is typing.
• Start the day with the overnight list. The first 15 minutes of the morning go to leads that arrived while you were closed, oldest first, before email or anything else.
• Track after-hours leads separately. They tell you whether longer office hours or a Saturday morning shift would pay.

Multiply the leads you answer late by the difference in how often fast and slow leads book, and by your average ticket. The point is not a precise number: it is to see whether the gap is worth a change to the rota.

monthly cost of slow replies = late leads × (booking rate when fast − booking rate when slow) × average ticket

Example with invented numbers: Palmetto gets 120 leads a month and answers 50 of them after 30 minutes. In its own records, leads answered within 5 minutes booked 40% of the time and late ones 25%. With a $450 average ticket, that is 50 × 0.15 × $450 = $3,375 a month in work that went somewhere else. Your figures will be different; the method is the same.

Speed to lead is one of the things Birdy is built around. Here is what works today and what is still coming.

• Today: every lead in the lead pipeline shows how long it has been waiting ("12 min", "3 h"), so old leads stand out on the board.
• Today: Reports show speed to lead for any date range: the median in minutes, the share handled within an hour, and how many leads are still waiting. A sales rep sees only their own leads.
• Today: online booking lets customers pick a real open time after hours, and follow-ups send email steps on a schedule.
• Coming: a live speed-to-lead timer and a strip at the top of the inbox and the leads board, counted in business hours, with the number of leads waiting right now.
• Coming: texting from the shared inbox is being connected. Texts run in a test mode until each company's number is registered with the carriers.