A lead that arrives at 5 pm on Friday waits 64 hours for a reply

An enquiry comes in through your form at 5:05 pm on a Friday. Nobody will read it before 9 am on Monday. In the meantime, the visitor may have contacted a competitor, or simply changed their mind.

What the Harvard Business Review measured

In 2011, three researchers published the results of two pieces of work on online enquiries in the Harvard Business Review.

• An audit of 2,241 US companies: 37% responded within an hour, 24% took more than 24 hours, and 23% never responded. Among those that responded within 30 days, the average response time was 42 hours.
• An analysis of 1.25 million enquiries handled by 42 companies: those that tried to contact the lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as those that waited even an hour longer, and more than 60 times as likely as those that waited 24 hours or more.

The authors define qualification as a real conversation with a decision maker. It is a step before the sale, not the sale itself.

The calendar works against you

With 9-to-5 weekday hours, an enquiry that arrives after 5 pm on a working day waits at least until 9 am the next morning. Friday evening enquiries wait 64 hours. Those from Friday 3 April 2026, before the Easter weekend, wait 88 hours.

Cutting the wait without being on call day and night

• Reply straight away, even without an adviser: a chat agent can answer common questions and tell the visitor when they will be called back.
• Collect the right information in the first exchange, so the Monday call back is useful.
• Handle weekend enquiries first on Monday morning: they are the oldest.