Two groups of leads
Leads × after-hours share gives your night and weekend leads. Everything else counts as a work-hours lead.
FREE TOOL
Lead response time: how long do your leads wait for a reply?
Daytime leads might hear back in minutes. Night and weekend leads often sit until morning. Count how many cross the one-hour line.
By the BlueSmith team · Updated
At a glance
- You enter
- Leads per month
- Leads that arrive after hours or on weekends
- Minutes to first reply during work hours
- Hours to first reply after hours
- You get
- Leads per month waiting over an hour
- Average wait for a first reply (minutes)
- Share of leads waiting over an hour
- How the math works
- Two groups of leads
- Leads waiting over an hour
- Average wait
- Example numbers, not a benchmark
- What it costs
- Free. No signup, no email. Arithmetic on your own numbers, not a promise of results.
Leads per month waiting over an hour: 24
Leads per month waiting over an hour24
- Average wait for a first reply (minutes)
- 315
- Share of leads waiting over an hour
- 40.0%
60 leads a month, 40% after hours, 45 minutes to reply in the day and 12 hours at night.
See what we’d build for these numbersStarts with example numbers. Change them to yours. Arithmetic only, not a promise of results.
HOW IT WORKS
Three steps. Your numbers.
- 01
Enter your numbers
Enter your leads per month and the share that come in after hours or on weekends.
- 02
Watch it recalculate
Add your usual time to first reply: minutes during work hours, hours after hours.
- 03
Use the answer
Look at the leads waiting over an hour, then fix the group that puts them there.
How the math works
Leads waiting over an hour
A group counts only when its reply time is past the hour: more than 60 minutes in the day, more than 1 hour after hours. When it does, every lead in that group counts. It’s all or nothing per group, so it shows the pattern, not a lead-by-lead log.
Average wait
(Work-hours leads × daytime minutes + after-hours leads × night hours × 60) ÷ all leads. The share waiting over an hour is that count ÷ all leads.
Example numbers, not a benchmark
50 leads, 30% after hours: 35 daytime, 15 after hours. A 20-minute daytime reply keeps the 35 under the hour; a 14-hour overnight wait puts all 15 over it. That’s 30% of leads, and an average wait of 266 minutes.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
Questions we hear.
Why does the tool draw the line at one hour?
Because that’s the line the Harvard Business Review study drew. Inside an hour isn’t the goal, it’s the outer edge. A reply in a few minutes beats one at minute 55.
Does it show the revenue I’m losing?
No. It counts wait times only. To put a dollar figure on leads that don’t get a fast reply, take the share from this tool into the missed lead calculator.
How do I find my real reply times?
Pull last month’s leads. For each one, compare when it came in with when someone first called or texted. Split them by work hours and after hours, then use the typical time in each group.
Does an automatic text count as a first reply?
Count it if it names your business and gives the homeowner a real next step, like a link to pick an estimate time. A bare “we got your message” doesn’t start the conversation.
Numbers are the start. Let’s build the system.
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