Speed to lead: the research behind replying in five minutes

The study everyone quotes, and what it actually measured

James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington audited how quickly firms responded to inbound web enquiries, and published the findings in Harvard Business Review as 'The Short Life of Online Sales Leads'. The audit covered thousands of US firms and tens of thousands of leads.

The headline result: firms that tried to contact a potential customer within an hour of receiving an enquiry were nearly seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision-maker than firms that waited even one hour longer — and more than sixty times more likely than firms that waited 24 hours or more.

The researchers also found that most firms were far slower than they believed. The average first-response time in their audit was measured in dozens of hours, not minutes, and a substantial share of enquiries were never responded to at all.

Why the decay curve is so steep

Intent is perishable. A customer messaging about a kitchen renovation, a bulk grocery order or a boutique enquiry is usually messaging three or four businesses in the same sitting. The first useful reply frames the comparison; every later reply is judged against it.

This is why 'we usually get back within a day' is not a service standard — it is a concession of the enquiry to whoever replied at minute two.

Speed on the page matters as much as speed in the inbox

Deloitte, working with Google, analysed mobile site data from 37 brands across retail, travel, luxury and lead generation in the study 'Milliseconds Make Millions'. Improving mobile site speed by just 0.1 seconds increased retail conversion rates by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2%.

For lead-generation businesses — which is what most local service brands are — the same 0.1 second improvement increased progression through the funnel by 21.6%. Luxury brands saw an 8.6% lift in page views per session.

In practice, page speed and reply speed are the same problem viewed at two scales: how long a ready-to-buy customer is asked to wait.

What automation should and should not do

Automation is not there to fake a human. It is there to close the gap between the moment intent peaks and the moment a person can respond properly.

A well-built WhatsApp flow acknowledges the message immediately, answers the two or three questions that are asked in almost every enquiry (price range, availability, location, timeline), shares the catalogue or portfolio, and captures the enquiry into a list the owner works through — so the human reply, when it comes, is informed rather than starting from zero.

What it should not do is loop, interrogate or hide the option of reaching a person. BrightLocal's 2025 review research found consumers are already suspicious of anything they read as inauthentic; the same instinct applies to conversations.

A benchmark you can hold yourself to

Set two numbers and measure them monthly: median first-response time, and the percentage of enquiries that receive no response at all. Most local businesses we audit start with a median in hours and a no-response rate above 15%.

Getting the median under five minutes and the no-response rate to zero is a systems problem with a known solution — and, on the HBR numbers, the single highest-leverage change available to a business that is already generating enquiries.