The first reply rule for every inquiry
A first reply that your team gives every time within a set time beats a faster one it gives on a good day. Pick a time you can keep, name who replies and write it down.
Where it goes wrong
A small clinic promised “we reply within 15 minutes” on its website. On quiet mornings the front desk did. On Mondays, when the phone and the messages came together, the median reply was three hours, and some inquiries got no answer until Tuesday.
Patients did not remember the quiet mornings. They remembered the Monday that nobody wrote back. The rule was faster than the clinic could keep, so it broke on the busiest day of the week.
Pick a time you can keep
Take the last two weeks of inquiries. Find the median time to the first reply and how many got no reply. Choose a time your slowest working day can still meet, not the time of your best morning.
If the median is four hours and you want fifteen minutes, do not announce fifteen. Announce two hours, keep it for a month, and then tighten it. Two hours kept every day beat fifteen minutes kept on quiet mornings.
Read the full answerName who replies
One person per channel replies, and one person covers when they are away. Write names, not roles. “Sales” is not a person, and an inquiry sent to “sales” belongs to nobody until the day someone notices it.
Check the coverage on paper: lunch, sick days, the late evening, the weekend. Whatever you cannot cover, say out loud in the rule instead of leaving the customer to find out.
Decide what counts as a reply
A reply from a person counts. An automatic “we got your message” does not stop the clock: the customer is still waiting for someone. An automatic message is useful, because it tells the customer the channel works, but it does not count.
Decide the same for a “call you back later” and for a question you send in return. Write the answer once, so that two sellers do not count the same thing two ways.
Measure for two weeks
Report the median, not the average. Count inquiries with no reply separately. Look at the numbers once a week with the people who reply. After two weeks the count tells you whether the rule is kept, whatever the team feels about it.
The free lead response audit scores the same thing in a few minutes and gives you a first view before you have the data.
Take the free lead response auditDo this week
- Find the median first-reply time of the last two weeks.
- Write the rule: the time, the names and what counts as a reply.
- Start counting inquiries with no reply.
Who replies to a new inquiry, how fast and with which words.