How fast should a business answer a new lead? Within minutes. Most businesses are far slower.

Answer within minutes if you can, and treat the first hour as the deadline. A 2026 study in the journal Management Science looked at 11.66 million conversations on Fiverr, a freelance marketplace. It found that "Even delays of just 5-10 minutes dramatically reduce providers' likelihood of being hired." The authors' universities put it in numbers: about 15% lower odds after 5 minutes, 46% lower after an hour and about 90% lower after a day.

That matches the classic study. In 2011, Harvard Business Review published an analysis of 1.25 million sales leads at 42 U.S. companies. Firms that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as firms that tried even an hour later.

Most businesses are slower than that. In a separate audit in the same 2011 HBR article, 23% of 2,241 U.S. companies never answered a web inquiry at all. Newer checks look similar. In a 2026 test of real estate offices, 68% of website inquiries got no reply within 24 hours. In a 2026 survey, only 20% of home service owners said they reply to leads within the hour.

Are there newer studies than the HBR one? Yes, and they agree with it. But nobody has published a controlled test on real local-business leads, and several numbers that get passed around ("85% of callers never call back", "78% buy from the first company to respond") have no original we could find. They are listed at the end, not used.

Disclosure. OKC SEO sells Form to Call and an AI receptionist, two products built around answering leads faster, so we have a reason to want these findings to be true. That is why we read every original, label each vendor study with who ran it, and list the popular numbers we dropped. Nobody paid for this review, and none of the study authors or companies reviewed it. Several sources below come from companies that sell phone or lead software, as we do.

Method and limits

What we measured

This is a review of other people's published research, not our own measurements. We looked for studies on two questions: how fast businesses actually reply to web leads and phone calls, and whether replying faster changes who wins the customer.

When

Sources found and read October 22, 2026.

How

• Started from the two classic studies (Harvard Business Review 2011 and the 2007 Lead Response Management Study), then searched journals, working papers, government reports and company reports from 2015 to 2026.
• Opened each original report, paper or data page and checked every number on this page against the source's own words. Where a journal article is behind a paywall, we used its official abstract and the authors' own university news releases, and say so.
• Labeled every company study as vendor data, with who ran it, what the company sells and how big the sample was.
• Noted what each study measured: a reply to a test inquiry, a call answered by a person, a callback, a lead that qualified, or a freelancer who was hired. These are different things, so the numbers are not compared as like for like.
• Dropped any number we could not trace to an original. The ones that circulate most are listed in their own section.

Limits

• We found no published randomized test on real local-business leads. Most speed findings are correlations: a business that answers fast may also be better run in other ways. The 2026 experiments are causal, but they asked people to make hypothetical hiring choices.
• Most of the data comes from settings other than local trades: a freelance marketplace, B2B software, real estate brokerages and medical offices.
• Many sources are vendors that sell call or lead software, as we do. Their methods are often thin: some don't give dates, sample sizes or how a missed call was counted.
• The full text of the 2026 Management Science paper is paywalled. Its percentages here come from the authors' university news releases, not the paper itself.
• The 2011 HBR article's free copy is an archived page. One of its three authors, David Elkington, was the CEO of InsideSales.com, a company that sold lead response software.

Does replying faster win more customers?

Yes, in every study we could check that measured it. The size of the effect depends on what was measured, so here is each study with its own definition.

"Qualify" in the HBR study meant "having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker." In the 2007 study each company used its own definition, such as setting an appointment.

"If a candidate's response appears automated or AI-generated, the benefit of speed disappears."

The 2007 study is often called "the MIT study." It used InsideSales.com's own customer data, analyzed with Professor Oldroyd while he was a faculty fellow at MIT, and was first presented at a marketing conference. It is useful, but it is vendor data.

The 2026 paper adds two things the older work could not show. Its experiments suggest that fast replies help on their own, apart from the quality of the worker or the message. The abstract says "Empirically, every minute counts." And speed stopped helping when the reply looked machine-made, which matters for anyone automating replies.

How fast do businesses actually reply to leads?

Slowly, in every test we found. Mystery shops, where researchers send a real-looking inquiry and time the reply, show a large share of businesses taking a day or more, or never replying.

Jobber's report gives two different within-the-hour figures for HVAC, 11% in one place and 17% in another, so we don't use either.

How many calls go unanswered, and what do callers do next?

Call data from phone software companies shows a large share of business calls are not answered by a person, and most missed calls are never returned. Each company counts a missed call differently, so read every figure with its own definition.

The two government and journal studies are about medical offices, not trades, but they are the only independent call tests we found. They show the same pattern as the vendor data: a large share of calls never reach a person.

Do customers keep shopping, or stop at the first good answer?

Many stop early. The National Association of REALTORS' 2025 survey of recent buyers found that 74% interviewed only one agent. On the selling side, "Eighty percent of recent sellers contacted only one agent before finding the right one." That survey does not show the first agent won because they were fast: many buyers and sellers came through referrals. It does show that many customers never talk to a second business.

A newer angle is AI assistants that shop on a person's behalf. In a 2025 Microsoft Research simulation, AI buying agents choosing between AI sellers showed "severe first-proposal bias," picking the first proposal 60% to 100% of the time. It is a simulation with AI buyers, not people, and not peer reviewed, but it suggests being first may matter even more as AI tools start booking services.

Popular lead response numbers we could not verify

These appear on many marketing pages. We looked for the original study behind each one and could not find it, so we don't use them.

• "85% of callers whose call isn't answered won't call back." We found no original study. Even CallRail's January 2025 report repeats a version of it with no source.
• "78% of customers buy from the company that responds first," usually credited to Lead Connect. We found no report, year or sample. It is a different number from CallRail's 2025 survey figure that 78% have taken their business elsewhere after an unanswered call.
• "35% to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first." No original found.
• "Your odds of qualifying a lead drop 400% after 5 minutes," often credited to Harvard Business Review. HBR's 2011 article does not report it. It garbles the 2007 study, which says that between 5 and 10 minutes the odds of qualifying fell 4 times and the odds of reaching the lead fell 5 times.
• "62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered" (411 Locals). The original exists, but it covered 85 businesses in 2016, counted calls that went to voicemail as unanswered and doesn't say how the calls were made. It is often quoted with a newer date.
• Drift's 2018 Lead Response Report. Its pages now redirect elsewhere, so we could not check its numbers.

Coming next: reply times from local businesses

Almost none of this research is about local trades. We plan to add our own numbers from a small "get 3 quotes" pilot in Oklahoma City. Customers who ask for it will be able to send one request to up to three local businesses, and we will record only when and how each business first replies.

We have no results yet. When there are enough requests to say something fair, the numbers and the method will be added to this page with a dated update.

What this means for a local business

The direction is the same across nearly 20 years and very different settings: the business that replies first, and replies like a person, is more likely to get the job. The multipliers differ (7 times, 21 times, 46%) because each study measured something different, so no single number is a rule for your business.

• The first hour matters most. Every study that measured time found the steepest drop early.
• A fast callback beats none. In Quo's call data, 69% of missed calls never got one within 48 hours.
• Website forms need the same speed as calls. In the 2026 real estate test, the study found website inquiries got "substantially worse results" than phone calls.
• Fast has to feel real. In the 2026 study, speed stopped helping when a reply looked automated, so use automation to get a person talking to the customer sooner, not to send a canned reply.

Check your own response time this week

You need your phone, your website and about 20 minutes.

1. Send your own website form

   Use a phone number your staff won't recognize, at a normal busy time. Write down how long it takes before anyone calls, texts or emails.

2. Call your main number at a bad moment

   Try during a job and after hours. Note whether it rings through, rings out, or goes to a voicemail that names your business.

3. Count last month's missed calls

   Your phone or call log shows them. Count how many got a callback, and how many of those came within an hour.

4. Name who answers what, and by when

   Decide who handles form leads and missed calls, and the longest anyone may wait. Write it down where the team can see it.

5. Test again next month

   Repeat steps 1 and 2. A change only counts if the next test is faster.

Data and sources

1. Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington: The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011 (free archived copy) The 2,241-company audit and the 1.25 million lead analysis. The current HBR page is paywalled.
2. Harvard Business Review: The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (current page, paywalled)
3. Oldroyd and InsideSales.com: Lead Response Management Study, 2007 (copy hosted by Mortech) Vendor data: InsideSales.com customer records from six companies.
4. Hart, VanEpps, Sezer, Amir: Speed Is a Signal: When Faster Replies Increase Hiring Likelihood, Management Science, 2026 Paywalled; we read the official abstract.
5. Cornell SC Johnson College of Business: news release on the 2026 study, August 18, 2026 Source of the 15% (5 minutes) and 46% (one hour) figures and the automated-reply finding.
6. Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management: news release on the 2026 study, July 23, 2026 Source of the roughly 90% figure for a one-day delay.
7. Kokkodis, Papadimitriou, Ipeirotis: Hiring Behavior Models for Online Labor Markets, WSDM 2015 (author copy)
8. Pied Piper: 2026 Lead Handling Effectiveness real estate study press release, October 5, 2026 Vendor data.
9. Workato: lead response time study Vendor data; test dates not stated.
10. Jobber: 2026 Home Service Trends Report Vendor survey of business owners.
11. Invoca: Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report 2026 Vendor platform data.
12. CallRail: How to close the missed call customer gap, June 4, 2026 Vendor platform data; method not given.
13. CallRail: Missed calls cost businesses more than ever, September 25, 2025 Vendor survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers.
14. CallRail: From Conversations to Conversions, January 2025 (copy hosted by Attorney at Work) Contains the unsourced "up to 85%" line discussed above.
15. Quo: Small business callback statistics, August 2026 Vendor platform data.
16. Moneypenny: Small Business Call Report findings, November 21, 2016 Vendor survey and call data.
17. U.S. Senate Committee on Finance majority staff: Secret Shopper Study Report, May 2023
18. Brahmbhatt, Schpero: Access to Psychiatric Appointments for Medicaid Enrollees in 4 Large US Cities, JAMA, 2024
19. National Association of REALTORS: 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (copy hosted by Rhode Island REALTORS) Trade association survey.
20. Bansal and others, Microsoft Research: Magentic Marketplace, arXiv preprint, 2025 Simulation; not peer reviewed.
21. 411 Locals: Small business owners don't answer 62% of phone calls, January 2016 Listed as a number we don't use.

How this was made

AI research agents working for Chris S Riddle, who runs OKC SEO, searched for studies on October 22, 2026 and saved the exact wording behind each number. The key originals were then re-read before writing.

This page was drafted with AI assistance. Before publishing, a separate AI review agent re-read the cited sources and checked every number, title, description and structured data against them, as described on our How we research page. We don't list AI as an author.

Spotted a mistake? Email chris@okcseo.media and we will check it against the data and correct the page.

Updates

• October 22, 2026: Published.
• October 22, 2026: Linked the product names Form to Call and AI receptionist to their pages.

Planned

• After the Oklahoma City quote pilot has enough requests: Our own numbers on how fast local businesses first reply, with the method.
• Every six months: A new search for studies, and a re-check that every source link still works.