How fast should you respond to a new enquiry? A follow-up plan that wins the job

Why response speed decides who wins the job

When someone fills in your enquiry form or leaves a message, they've usually contacted more than one business. They're comparing, and their interest is at its peak the moment they hit send. The business that replies first, while the problem is still front of mind, often gets the conversation and frequently the job. Wait too long and you're calling someone who has already spoken to a competitor, or simply moved on.

This isn't just a hunch. In a Harvard Business Review study, researchers audited 2,241 US companies by sending each one a web enquiry and timing the reply. Only 37% responded within an hour, 16% took between one and 24 hours, 24% took more than a day, and 23% never replied at all. Among the companies that did respond, the average time was about 42 hours. Most businesses, in other words, are far slower than their customers expect.

The same researchers looked at a separate pool of 1.25 million leads and found that firms which made contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker as those that waited just an hour longer, and more than 60 times as likely as those that waited a day or more. Those figures come from older US sales data and won't map exactly onto a local service business, but the direction is consistent, and it matches common sense: reply while the enquiry is fresh.

The first hour matters most, and so do the first minutes

If an hour beats a day, do minutes beat an hour? The evidence points that way. A widely cited study run with a researcher then at MIT analysed more than 15,000 web leads and over 100,000 call attempts across six companies. It found the odds of actually reaching a lead were roughly 100 times higher when the first call went out within five minutes rather than after 30, and the odds of qualifying the lead were about 21 times higher. The odds of making contact dropped by more than ten times in just the first hour.

You won't hit five minutes on every enquiry, and you don't need to. The point isn't a stopwatch, it's a habit: treat a new enquiry as something to action now, not at the end of the day. Even when you can't have the full conversation straight away, a quick first response, a text or a short call to say you've got their enquiry and when you'll follow up, holds their attention while you get ready to help them properly.

How to make a fast reply realistic

Responding quickly sounds obvious, but it falls apart when enquiries land in an inbox nobody's watching, or when everybody assumes someone else has it. A little setup turns speed from heroics into routine, even for a small or busy team.

• Send an instant acknowledgement. An automatic reply that confirms you've received the enquiry and says when you'll be in touch buys you time and reassures the customer. Because it's a direct reply to the enquiry they made, it isn't marketing, so it doesn't need marketing consent.
• Get notified the moment it arrives. Have new enquiries pushed to you straight away by email and, ideally, a text or app alert, rather than discovered hours later when someone next opens the inbox.
• Decide who owns first response, and a backup. When it's clear whose job it is to reply first, and who covers when they're on a job or on leave, enquiries stop slipping through the gap.
• Keep your first questions ready. A short, consistent set of questions helps you work out quickly whether an enquiry is a fit and what to say next, so the first call actually moves things forward.
• Have an honest after-hours plan. If an enquiry lands overnight, an auto-acknowledgement plus a first-thing-next-morning call is perfectly reasonable. The research on the best times to reach people points to normal business hours anyway, so a prompt morning callback loses very little.

Keep readingHave your qualifying questions ready

Keep readingGive every enquiry an owner and a backup

Keep readingCheck whether a chatbot would help with after-hours questions

A simple follow-up plan when they don't answer

Speed gets you the best shot, but most enquiries still aren't won on the first attempt. People are busy, calls get missed, and a single message is easy to overlook. A light, planned follow-up sequence beats both giving up after one try and pestering someone into annoyance.

The same research offers a useful nuance here: making several attempts in the first day helps, but chasing endlessly much later does not, and can even backfire. So concentrate your effort early, then taper off. There's no magic number, but a sensible default for a service business looks like this:

Whatever the cadence, always leave a clear message with a specific next step and an easy way to reply. "I can come Thursday morning or Friday afternoon, which suits you?" gets a response far more often than "call me back".

• Attempt one, within minutes: call if you can, and if there's no answer, follow up straight away by text or email so there's a record and an easy way to reply.
• Later the same day: one more attempt on a different channel. If you called first, try a short message; if you messaged first, try a call.
• Over the next few days: two or three more spaced attempts, mixing channels, each with a clear next step rather than a vague "just checking in".
• Then stop or slow right down: if they've gone quiet after a handful of genuine attempts, move them to occasional, lower-key follow-up instead of repeated calls.

Keep readingCheck when a follow-up call needs a Do Not Call check

Stay useful, not annoying

There's a line between prompt follow-up and hassling someone, and it matters both for your reputation and for the rules. Replying to the enquiry a person actually made is expected and welcome. Adding them to an ongoing newsletter or promotional list is a different thing, and in Australia that kind of marketing generally needs their consent and an easy way to unsubscribe.

So keep the two separate. Chase the specific enquiry as promptly and helpfully as you like, but don't quietly roll someone into ongoing marketing just because they once asked for a quote. A handful of helpful, spaced touches focused on their job will out-perform a barrage, and when someone tells you they're not interested, stop. Respecting that is part of why the next person trusts you.

Keep readingGet consent before ongoing marketing

Keep readingKeep automated job updates free of marketing

A worked example

Here's how this tends to play out, with the businesses and details invented to show the shape rather than promise a result. Two electricians get the same website enquiry at 8:40 on a Wednesday morning, a switchboard upgrade quote. Electrician A is on the tools and checks his inbox at lunch. He calls at 2pm, gets voicemail, leaves a "call me back" message, and tries once more the next day before giving up.

Electrician B has his enquiry form set to text him the moment something lands. He sees it, calls back within about ten minutes, and reaches the customer while they're still thinking about it. He asks two quick questions, offers a Thursday or Friday visit, and sends a short confirmation text so there's a record. Same enquiry, same suburb, similar price, but B is the one having the conversation while A is still leaving voicemails. The numbers are illustrative and your own results will vary, but the pattern, fast first contact plus a second channel, is the part worth copying.