Benchmark · March 2011 study
Speed to lead
Speed to lead is the time between a form submission and the first reply a person actually receives. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review article, the average among firms that replied within 30 days was 42 hours.
Updated September 2026
42 hours
Average first response in the 2011 audit
Among firms that replied within 30 days. Oldroyd, McElheran, and Elkington, Harvard Business Review.
37%
replied within an hour
42 hours
average among those who replied in 30 days
Nearly 7×
more likely to qualify the lead inside an hour than an hour later
What speed to lead means
Speed to lead is that gap, measured from the moment someone submits a form to the moment they receive a reply. It is not how long a lead sits unread, and it is not a product category.
The figures on this page come from James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran, and David Elkington, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,” Harvard Business Review, March 2011. Responser did not run that audit. The study looked at U.S. firms. The five workflows below are the forms this product writes a first reply for: insurance, mortgages, law, car leasing, and valuations.
Lead response time
Lead response time is the same clock: submit, then the first reply. In the authors’ audit of 2,241 U.S. companies, 37% replied within an hour, 16% replied between one hour and 24 hours, 24% took more than 24 hours, and 23% never replied.
Among the companies that did reply within 30 days, the average lead response time was 42 hours. A B2B team waiting on a shared inbox is inside that average, not outside it.
What a faster reply changed
In a separate count of 1.25 million leads, from 29 consumer firms and 13 business firms, companies that tried to reach someone within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as companies that waited even an hour longer. They were more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.
The authors defined qualify as a meaningful conversation with a decision maker. Those multiples are theirs. A sample reply on a Responser workflow, such as 42 seconds, is one example. It is not a promise that every form will match the study.
What the first reply may say
The first reply confirms what the person entered. It does not add a price, a rate, or an outcome unless an approved knowledge item allows that sentence. How an approved reply is sent is the product step. Scoring the lead is separate.
An insurance quote can confirm the cover requested. A mortgage application can confirm the amount. A law-firm enquiry can confirm the dates and the review time. A car lease can confirm the model, the term, and the mileage. A valuation request can confirm the address and the next slot.
Who sends it
The reply is signed as the business and sent from that business’s domain after the domain is verified. A new form starts in approval. A score of 80 or above raises an alert. The score does not send the message.
You can time the reply your current form already sends. That exercise records your form. It does not replace the 2011 audit.
| Reply window | Share of 2,241 firms | What was recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Within an hour | 37% | A reply inside the hour the study compared |
| One hour to 24 hours | 16% | A reply the same day, after the first hour |
| More than 24 hours | 24% | A reply, later than a day |
| No reply recorded | 23% | No response in the audit |
Related
Questions
Speed to lead is the time from a form submission to the first reply the person receives.