How fast does your shop really answer?

Most businesses answer new leads slowly, or never. What the studies found, what they do not prove, and a 10-minute test for your own shop.

A homeowner calls you, or fills in the form on your website. Then they wait. How long they wait is called speed to lead.

Most owners think they answer fast. The studies say most businesses do not.

How slow businesses really are

• Web leads. Harvard Business Review sent one test lead to the websites of 2,241 US companies. 37% answered within an hour. 24% took more than a day. 23% never answered at all. The companies that did answer took 42 hours on average. ^[1]
• Home-service requests. A marketing agency, Valve+Meter, sent service requests to 466 home-service companies (HVAC, plumbing, home improvement and more). After five days, only 60% had answered. If a company did not answer in the first six hours, there was a 75% chance it never answered. ^[2]
• Phone calls. Invoca, a company that sells call software, looked at calls to home-service businesses that use its platform. 52% of calls reached a person. For calls longer than 15 seconds, which leaves out wrong numbers and quick hang-ups, it was 65%. ^[3]
• Missed calls. Quo, a business phone company, looked at 16.7 million missed calls from its own customers. 69% got no call back within 48 hours. ^[4]

Does answering fast make a difference?

The same Harvard Business Review team looked at 1.25 million leads at 42 US companies. Companies that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to have a real conversation with the decision maker as companies that tried even an hour later. Compared with companies that waited 24 hours or more, it was more than 60 times. ^[1]

What this does not prove:

• It shows that fast companies did better. It does not prove that speed alone caused it. Fast companies may also be better at other things.
• The data is from before 2011 and covers all industries, not only home services.
• One of the authors ran a company that sold sales software.

So the numbers are old and they are not proof. But nobody has found the opposite: no study we know of shows that waiting helps.

Your customer is not waiting for you

• In a 2026 survey of more than 1,100 US homeowners, 68% said they get more quotes when a price comes in higher than they expected. 58% said they call a pro after a sudden problem or a system failure. ^[5]
• In another 2026 survey of 2,000 US homeowners, 56% said they want to book any time, or to have a way to reach a business after hours. 66% of the business owners in the same study said after-hours service is their top challenge. ^[6]

A homeowner with water on the floor calls more than one shop. A homeowner with a high quote asks someone else. The shop that answers first gets the first conversation.

Google keeps score too

If you run Google Local Services Ads, Google says how likely your ad is to bring a lead depends on several things, including "your responsiveness to customer inquiries and requests". Google adds: "Missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness." Your average response time is also part of your profile quality, and Google says higher-quality profiles "may rank higher and may also pay lower costs per lead." ^[7]

Answering is not enough. Ask for the job.

Invoca also says 55% of home-service businesses "don't ask leads to buy or book the job" on the call. ^[3] A fast answer that ends with "we'll get back to you" can still lose the job.

A 10-minute test for your own shop

1. Call your own number at 8 PM from your cell. Count the rings. Write down what the caller hears.
2. Fill in your own website form on a weekday morning. Write down the time. Write down when someone calls or emails you back.
3. Check last week's missed calls. How many got a call back the same day?
4. Listen to one real call. Did the person who answered offer a time for the visit?

If any answer surprises you, pick a goal and write it down. For example: every form gets a call back within 15 minutes during business hours, and every missed call gets a call back the same day. Then test again next month.