The number: within the hour
Reply to every lead within an hour; aim for minutes. This is the finding people mean by "the Harvard study":
"Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer." (Harvard Business Review, 2011)
What to know before quoting it:
- It comes from 1.25 million sales leads at 29 consumer and 13 business-to-business companies in the US (HBR).
- "Qualify" means a real conversation with the decision maker, not a sale.
- The data is over 15 years old and wasn't about local service businesses. Treat the multiples as a direction, not a forecast.
Speed to lead statistics: how slow most firms are
The same article reports an audit of 2,241 US companies that were each sent a test web lead (HBR):
| First response | Share of companies |
|---|---|
| Within an hour | 37% |
| 1 to 24 hours | 16% |
| More than 24 hours | 24% |
| Never | 23% |
"The average response time, among companies that responded within 30 days, was 42 hours." (HBR)
What about "call within 5 minutes"?
The often-quoted "100 times more likely to reach a lead at 5 minutes than at 30" is usually traced to a 2007 study run with a sales-software company. We couldn't find the original report, so it isn't used here. The HBR article above is the published source.
How fast leads decide
Some decide before you could reply at all. At an accounting firm we run marketing for, the best leads had decided before they arrived: 14 of 19 serious prospects booked within 10 minutes of landing, and most of a month's 35 bookers booked within 3 minutes. Four of five early Google bookers tapped "book" within a minute.
Speed matters after the first reply too. The same firm called every booker on time. The leaks came after the call: one written quote arrived 14 days later, past the client's deadline.
So: let people book themselves on your site, reply in minutes to everyone else, and send quotes the same day.
After-hours leads: who answers at 9 pm
Pick one, and test it with a call at 9 pm.
| Option | Cost (listed, US$) | Fits when |
|---|---|---|
| Forward to your cell | Your evenings | Few calls, and you'll pick up |
| Missed-call text back | Software fee | Callers can wait until morning; see the consent rules |
| Live answering service | Ruby from $250/mo for 50 minutes (Ruby) | Callers want a person |
| AI receptionist | Smith.ai: free for 25 calls, $150/mo for 75 (Smith.ai) | Many calls, bookings into your calendar; see AI receptionist |
| Web form auto-reply + morning call | Depends on your form tool | Leads by form, not phone |
| Pause call ads after hours | Free | Nobody will answer at all |
Two Google details matter at night:
- Unanswered after-hours calls can vanish from your reports: "Without a voicemail or a call service, unanswered calls after your business hours don't appear in your reports" (Google Ads Help).
- You can schedule a call asset "to show only on certain days and hours—for example, only when your business is answering phone calls" (Google Ads Help).
On Local Services Ads, the missed-call charge applies to calls "during your business hours" (Google), but a voicemail, text or email from a customer is still listed as a lead (Google).
How to measure your speed to lead
- Send your own business a test lead by web form at 9 pm on a weekday. Time the first human or useful reply.
- Call your number at 9 pm and on Saturday afternoon. Note what happens.
- For a month, log each lead's arrival time and first reply time. Track the median and the share answered within an hour.
- Compare booking rates for leads answered within an hour and later. That's your own version of the study.
Example
Roofer, web form at 9:10 pm
Today: reply at 9 am next day, 12 hours later. Fix: an instant auto-reply with a booking link, then a call at 8 am. The lead gets something useful in under a minute.
HVAC, calls at night in a heat wave
Call ads run 24 hours, but nobody answers after 6 pm. Either cover nights (answering service or AI receptionist) or schedule call ads to business hours. Paying for calls nobody answers is the worst of both.
Law firm intake on weekends
A potential client fills in the form Saturday. If nobody calls until Monday, that's over 40 hours, close to the 42-hour HBR average. See personal injury intake.
Different for you?
- Your leads are phone calls you miss: Missed calls: what they cost.
- You want to text missed callers automatically: Missed-call text back.
- You're choosing between AI, an answering service and a hire: AI receptionist for a small business.
- You want to know which ad leads became jobs: Tracking a lead from Google Ads to a booked job.
- You run a dental office: AI receptionist for a dental office.
- You're a personal injury firm: Personal injury intake.