How it works
The clock starts when a new prospect first gets in touch and stops when someone on your team replies with something useful. An automatic “Thanks, we got your message” usually shouldn’t count, because the prospect still has no answer.
To measure it, you need two timestamps per new lead: when the inquiry arrived and when the first human reply went out. Most teams look at the median and at the slowest cases, since a few leads that waited overnight tell you more than an average does.
Example
A kitchen remodeler posts its WhatsApp number on a home-show flyer. On Saturday at 10:15 AM a homeowner writes: “Do you do cabinet refacing, or only full remodels?”
- If the owner sees it at 10:20 and answers the question, speed to lead is five minutes.
- If the message sits on the sales rep’s personal phone until Monday morning, speed to lead is about 48 hours, and the homeowner has probably messaged two other companies.
Nothing changed about the lead. What changed was whether the message reached someone who could answer.
Speed to lead vs. first response time
The two are closely related but not identical:
- Speed to lead applies only to new prospects, and is a sales metric.
- First response time usually applies to every new conversation, including existing customers with support questions.
A team can have a good overall first response time and still be slow with new leads if they arrive at times nobody is watching.
Why it matters for messaging teams
People who send a message tend to expect a conversation, not a callback next week. When several businesses are a tap away, the one that answers the question first often gets the next message. You don’t need an industry statistic to see this in your own data: compare how often fast-answered leads reply again versus slow ones.
Common mistakes
- Counting auto-replies as responses.
- Measuring only business hours and ignoring the evening leads that make up a large share of chat inquiries for many service businesses.
- No owner for new leads. Use conversation assignment or rotation so every new message lands with a person.
- Replying fast but with nothing useful. Speed only helps if the reply moves the conversation forward.
Response timers and response-time analytics in inChat are in development.