Lead response time calculator

Lead response time is how long a new inquiry waits before a person on your team answers it. A team can move this number within a week, which makes it a good first number for a new head of sales.

Run the calculator for one channel at a time. A quick messenger and a slow email inbox averaged together give a figure nobody on the team recognizes.

Each inquiry needs two timestamps from the CRM: arrival and the first reply by a person. Arrival is the form sent, the first message, or the call, answered or missed. The first reply is the first outgoing message or call in that deal that answers the question or asks a useful one. An auto-reply or a bare "hello?" does not count.

Export last week's inquiries for one channel, subtract arrival from first reply in a spreadsheet, and paste the minutes here. Inquiries with no reply yet cannot go into the list, so write their count next to the result as missed: those customers are still waiting. Check that arrival is recorded automatically. A phone inquiry typed in an hour later starts the clock late.

The median shows what a typical customer gets. The average shows how hard the slow cases pull: when it sits far above the median, a few inquiries waited for hours. The share within the standard shows how often you keep the promise. Example (invented numbers): a median of 20 minutes, an average of 95 and 70% inside a 60-minute standard mean three inquiries in ten waited longer than promised, and some waited much longer.

Staffing decisions start from the share, which is the reply-on-time number on the weekly page. A low share in one channel is a cover question: lunch, evenings, sick days. A high share with few inquiries turning into a conversation sends you to the text of the first reply. Tighten the standard only after the current one has held for a month. If you have no written standard yet, the First reply standard kit takes you through it one channel at a time.

• Starting the clock when the deal is created instead of when the inquiry arrived.
• Pasting all channels into one list.
• Reading only the average. One inquiry answered the next morning can double it.
• Reading only the team number. Each week, open the five slowest inquiries and ask what happened to each.

By Friday, export last week's inquiries per channel and run each channel through the calculator; on Monday, agree one change with the people who answer the channel with the lowest share.