How quickly does a new enquiry get a real reply? Not on a quiet afternoon, but on a normal Tuesday with a full diary and three things already pressing.
For most small businesses the honest answer is that it depends. Sometimes the same day, sometimes the next morning, occasionally later. That variability is the problem.
What the research shows.
The most cited study on the subject was published in Harvard Business Review in 2011 as "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads" (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington). Across 1.25 million leads, firms that tried to contact a potential customer within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that waited even an hour longer. The same study found an average response time of 42 hours among firms that replied, and that 23% never replied at all.
A widely repeated figure says that replying within five minutes makes contact 100 times more likely than waiting 30. It does not come from this study, and it is best treated with caution. The one-hour finding is the reliable one.
The reason is not complicated. An enquiry is usually sent at the point of highest interest. The longer the wait, the more that interest fades, and the more time another business has to reply first.
The gap is workload, not intent.
Most owners already know this, and intend to reply quickly. The gap comes from the fact that fast replies need someone watching for new enquiries all day, and in a small team that is rarely anyone's actual job. An enquiry that arrives at four on a Friday afternoon may not be seen until Monday.
The practical answer is not someone watching the inbox. It is an automatic first response that confirms the enquiry has arrived, says when a proper reply will follow, and keeps the enquirer informed. That buys time for a considered answer without losing them in the meantime.
Follow-up is where most leads are won or lost.
The first response is only the start. Velocify's Ultimate Contact Strategy research, based on around 3.5 million leads, found that half of leads are never contacted a second time, while 93% of converted leads were reached by the sixth attempt. Many businesses send one message and treat silence as a no. The research suggests silence is usually just silence.
Workato's study of 114 B2B companies found that firms using lead-routing automation responded in around three and a half hours on average, against nearly 13 hours for those without it. The difference is not discipline. A person has to notice an enquiry before acting on it, and noticing consistently across every hour of the working day is a workload problem.
Ask Astro can show where your current enquiry flow slows down, and what an Increase Leads system would change, where configured.