Businesses responding within 60 seconds convert at three times the rate of those responding within an hour
The response time study from MIT and InsideSales surveyed over 100,000 enquiries across service industries. One finding has been replicated multiple times: businesses responding to enquiries within 60 seconds convert at approximately three times the rate of those responding within an hour. The gap compounds further beyond an hour.
The mechanism is not mysterious. A prospect making an enquiry has a narrow window of active interest. In the first minutes after sending a form or leaving a voicemail, they are focused on the problem and ready to engage. An hour later, they have moved on to something else. Two hours later, they may have already spoken to a competitor.
For a domestic cleaning company receiving 44 enquiries per month, the conversion difference is significant. Operating with a manual response averaging four hours after first contact, the business was converting 18 percent of enquiries to paying clients. An AI-enabled response, arriving within 60 seconds, moved the rate to 31 percent. The same 44 enquiries now produced 14 clients rather than eight.
Six additional clients per month at an average recurring value of £180 per month produces an additional £1,080 in monthly revenue. Over 12 months, that is £12,960, from changing nothing about the service, pricing, or marketing budget.
The enquiries were already arriving. The business was losing a significant proportion of them to response lag.
The three-times figure is an average across a large dataset. Individual results vary. Some businesses see less. Some see more. Every business operating with a manual response of over 30 minutes is, to some degree, losing enquiries to timing rather than quality. The relevant question is not whether the stat applies. It is how many hours pass, on average, before a new enquiry gets a reply.
EveryCatch responds to every enquiry within 60 seconds, regardless of the time it arrives. Book a free discovery call and we will show you what that changes for your business.
