Lead response timeForm SA-1Rev. 10 / 2026
Subject: Lead response time
Two studies from 2007 and 2011 sit behind most lead response time claims. Here is what they measured, what they did not, and how to get a number that is actually yours.
Search for lead response time and the same claims come back: respond within five minutes, the odds of qualifying a lead fall sharply after the first hour, most companies take far too long. They appear in sales blogs and vendor decks, often without a date or a link. Most trace back to two pieces of research: the Lead Response Management Study led by Dr. James Oldroyd with InsideSales.com, published in 2007, and the Harvard Business Review article “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” from 2011.
Both are useful. Both are also old, and both measured something narrower than the way they are usually quoted.
The study looked at how sales reps followed up on web leads at different delays. Its most repeated finding is that the odds of contacting and qualifying a lead were much higher when the first follow-up came within minutes rather than half an hour or more.
The 2011 article by James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington looked at how quickly a large set of US companies responded to web inquiries. It reported that many companies took hours or longer and some never responded, and that firms answering within an hour were far more likely to reach a decision maker than those that waited longer.
A chat or CRM dashboard reports the mean first-response time, often counted only in business hours and only once a person picks up. The prospect lives something else: the bot that asks for an e-mail instead of answering, the handoff that comes after the tab is closed, the widget that says “online” when nobody is watching. An average can look fine while those conversations go cold.
Instead of borrowing a 2007 or 2011 number, measure your own lead response time from the prospect’s side:
An open AI check from Straight Answer does exactly that. Our AI opens your live chat, introduces itself as an AI check (“AI check by Straight Answer” in the name field), asks what your customers ask and records every reply with a timestamp. The report gives you the reply times, the quotes and the fixes, and keeps every report so you can compare.
The lead response time calculator turns your monthly leads, the share answered late, your close rate and your average deal into an estimate of revenue at risk. For the wider picture, read speed to lead, see what a live chat test covers, or look at the sample report.
Notes
The time between a prospect reaching out, for example with a chat message or a form, and the first reply that actually answers them. An auto-greeting is not a response.
Sooner is better, and the studies most often quoted point to minutes rather than hours. Measure your own number first, then set a target your team can keep at the hours leads arrive.
Published averages come from different samples, years and channels, so they rarely match your business. An average also hides the slow conversations that lose leads. Your own measured number, with the slowest replies visible, is more useful.
No. The 2007 study looked at sales follow-up of web leads, and the 2011 analysis at company responses to web inquiries. Chat makes speed even more visible: the visitor is on your site and watching the window.
Start a conversation the way a prospect would, at the hours that matter, and record the time to the first real answer. An open AI check does this for you and keeps the timestamps and quotes in a report.
Request
$1, one check, one report. Then decide.