What we measured
We measured how many seconds it took to reach a human, and compared it against the standard for your business class.
Why it matters
The two most-cited studies on response speed are worth knowing accurately, because they're usually quoted wrong.
Harvard Business Review, 2011 - 1.25 million online leads across 42 companies. Firms contacting a lead within one hour were about 7× more likely to qualify it than those responding in the second hour, and more than 60× more likely than those waiting 24 hours or more. In the same study, 23% of companies never responded at all, and the average first response among those who did respond was 42 hours.
A second study using platform data found the odds of contacting a lead drop roughly 100× between 5 minutes and 30 minutes.
Two honest caveats: both studies are from 2007-2011, and phone behaviour has changed a great deal since. And neither measured revenue - they measured contact and qualification. The claim that responding in five minutes multiplies your revenue is not supported by either.
What is well supported: within one hour is the real threshold, and past 24 hours you are statistically close to not having responded at all.
Fix it yourself
Find your standard
Different businesses are held to different bars, because a roofing emergency and a legal consultation aren't the same thing.
Your audit report names your class. The targets:
YOUR BUSINESS TYPE BRONZE SILVER GOLD PLATINUM
Solo / micro (coach, consultant, food truck) same business day 4 hrs 1 hr 30 min Local standard (salon, shop, restaurant) 4 business hrs 1 hr 30 min 15 min Field service (HVAC, roofing, plumbing) 4 business hrs 1 hr 15 min 24/7 verified Professional / regulated (law, dental, accounting) 1 business day 4 business hrs 1 business hr 30 min
Step 1
Measure where you actually are For two weeks, log every inbound call and inquiry: when it came in, and when a human actually responded.
Don't estimate. Owners consistently guess much faster than reality, because the fast responses are the ones you remember.
Step 2
Fix the biggest gap first3
Common mistakes
Measuring only the calls you remember. Log everything.
Publishing a standard you can't hit. Set it where you actually live, then improve it.
Counting an auto-reply as a response. The clock stops when a human responds.
This fix is free. You can earn and keep any Agenarys Seal tier - including Platinum - without paying Agenarys anything beyond the audit itself. If you would rather have help doing it, we sell that. We never sell passage.
Sources and further reading
Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington - 'The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,' Harvard Business Review, March 2011
Lead Response Management study (InsideSales platform data)
Note: both datasets are 2007-2011; treat the direction as robust and the multipliers as dated.
Agenarys · Operational Intelligence Audit · Standard v2026.1 Issued July 2026 · agenarys.com/guides/response-time Look at your log and find the pattern. It's almost always one of these: Calls during jobs → set up conditional forwarding (see Make Sure Your Phone Gets Answered) Calls after hours → set up an after-hours path (see Handle After-Hours Calls) Web form inquiries → get notifications on your phone (see Respond to Web Inquiries Fast) One person is a bottleneck → add a backup on the rotation Set a rule you can actually keep Write it down and tell your team: "Every inbound call gets a human within ___ minutes during business hours, and a callback by ___ the next morning if
it comes in after hours."
An honest standard you hit beats an ambitious one you miss. Customers forgive a stated four-hour response. They don't forgive a promised fifteen minutes that takes two days.
Step 4
Publish it
Put your standard on your website next to your phone number: "We answer during business hours and return every after-
hours call by 8am."
This converts. It's specific, it's checkable, and almost none of your competitors say anything at all.
Step 5
You know which class standard applies to you.☐
You have two weeks of real response-time data.☐
You've fixed the largest gap.☐
You have a written internal standard.☐ Your standard is published on your website.☐