The Lead Response Time Study You Need to See

78% of customers hire the first contractor to respond.

Not the cheapest. Not the one with the most reviews. Not the one with the best website. The first one who actually picks up the phone or sends a reply.

The data on this is unambiguous. Multiple studies across industries confirm it. InsideSales found it. Harvard Business Review found it. Every CRM vendor with access to response time data has found the same thing.

And yet the average home service contractor takes 47 hours to respond to a web lead.

The response time data

MIT and InsideSales conducted the original landmark study on lead response time. They analyzed 100,000+ inbound leads across B2B companies and found that speed was the single biggest predictor of conversion.

Responding within 5 minutes made reps 100x more likely to connect with the lead. After 30 minutes, the odds of qualifying that lead dropped by 21x.

A follow-up study by Lead Response Management found even more dramatic numbers for the first 60 seconds. Calling a lead within 1 minute of their form submission increased conversion by 391% compared to calling at the 1-hour mark.

The Harvard Business Review replicated these findings and added context. Firms that responded within an hour were 7x more likely to qualify the lead compared to those who waited longer. They were 60x more likely to qualify compared to firms that waited 24 hours or more.

These studies focused on B2B sales. Home services is different in some ways but the same where it matters. A homeowner with a broken AC or a leaking pipe has high urgency. They’re not browsing casually. They want someone now.

If anything, speed matters more in home services than in B2B.

Why 47 hours is killing your conversions

ServiceTitan published data showing the average home service contractor takes 47 hours to respond to a web lead. Jobber’s data shows similar numbers.

47 hours. Nearly two full business days.

During those 47 hours, the homeowner has submitted forms on two or three other websites. They’ve called the contractor whose number was easiest to find. They’ve booked an appointment with whoever answered first.

By the time you call back on Thursday morning about the form they submitted Tuesday night, they’ve already signed a contract with someone else.

The lead isn’t cold. The lead is gone.

Think about your own behavior as a consumer. You need something done. You reach out to a few options. One of them gets back to you immediately and seems professional. Do you keep waiting to hear from the others, or do you just book with the one who responded?

Your customers are doing the same thing.

The 5-minute cliff

Lead qualification drops 80% after the first 5 minutes.

This isn’t gradual decay. There’s a cliff. Within the first 5 minutes, you have the homeowner’s full attention. They just submitted the form. They’re probably still on your website or near their phone. They’re in buying mode.

After 5 minutes, they’ve moved on to something else. They started cooking dinner. They’re driving to pick up the kids. They’re back at work. The urgency that drove them to reach out has faded into the background of daily life.

When you call 6 hours later, you’re interrupting whatever they’re doing now. The context is gone. They have to remember which contractor you are and what they even asked about.

When you call 47 hours later, they’ve forgotten the whole thing. Or they’ve already booked with someone else and your call is just an annoyance.

The companies that dominate lead conversion have figured this out. They’ve built systems that respond instantly, 24/7, no matter when the lead comes in.

What fast response actually looks like

The contractors winning on speed have automated the first touchpoint.

A form submission triggers an immediate SMS: “Thanks for reaching out! We got your message and someone will call you in the next 10 minutes.” That text arrives within 5 seconds of the form submission.

That single text message does several things. It confirms the form worked. It sets expectations for callback timing. And it signals professionalism.

More importantly, it buys you time. The homeowner knows you’re responsive. They’re more likely to wait for your call rather than submitting another form somewhere else.

The actual phone call needs to happen fast, but it doesn’t need to be instant. A 10-minute response window is enough if you’ve already acknowledged receipt.

Some contractors use AI phone agents to handle the initial response. The AI answers immediately, gathers basic information about the job, and schedules a callback from a human. Available 24/7, never misses a lead.

Read more about automating your lead follow-up.

The math on same ad spend

Two contractors run identical Google Ads campaigns. Same budget, same keywords, same landing page. Both get 20 leads per month.

Contractor A responds in 5 minutes on average. He connects with 18 of the 20 leads. At a 30% close rate, he books 5-6 jobs.

Contractor B responds in 47 hours on average. He connects with 8 of the 20 leads because the others have already booked with someone else or stopped answering their phones. At a 30% close rate, he books 2-3 jobs.

Same ad spend. Same leads. One contractor books 2x the jobs.

Contractor B thinks he has a lead quality problem. He considers switching agencies or trying a different advertising channel. The problem was never the leads.

The problem was 47 hours.

Why contractors respond slowly

Nobody decides to wait 47 hours on purpose. The slow response happens because of systems, not intent.

Form submissions go to an email inbox that doesn’t get checked regularly. The owner is on a job site all day and looks at emails after dinner. Phone calls go to voicemail and get returned when there’s time between appointments.

Small contracting businesses don’t have dedicated salespeople sitting by the phone. The owner or office manager handles sales while also handling everything else.

This is a structural problem, not a motivation problem. Telling contractors to “respond faster” doesn’t help. They know they should. They can’t.

The solution is automation that removes humans from the initial response loop.

Auto-texts that trigger on form submission. Auto-emails with next steps and scheduling links. Phone systems that route to the first available person or an answering service. AI agents that handle off-hours leads.

Speed isn’t about working harder. Speed is about building systems that work when you can’t.

What “good” response time looks like

Based on the data, here’s what to aim for.

Under 5 minutes gets you in the top tier. If you can consistently respond to web leads within 5 minutes, you’re faster than 90%+ of contractors and you’ll connect with nearly every lead.

Under 1 hour keeps you competitive. The dropoff between 5 minutes and 1 hour is significant but not catastrophic. If you’re responding within the hour, you’ll still connect with most leads before they book elsewhere.

Over 1 hour is where you start losing badly. Response times beyond an hour mean the homeowner has moved on. You might still connect, but you’re fighting an uphill battle against someone who already has the relationship.

Over 24 hours is throwing money away. At the 47-hour average, contractors are converting a fraction of what they could with the same lead flow. Every lead over 24 hours old is probably already a customer of someone else.

Building speed into your process

The tactical implementation depends on your current tech stack, but the principles are universal.

Step one: automate the immediate acknowledgment. Every form submission, chat message, and missed call should trigger an instant text and email. This doesn’t require expensive software. Basic tools like Zapier can connect your web forms to SMS services.

Step two: route leads to whoever can respond. If you can’t answer, the call should go to someone who can. An answering service costs $100-300 a month and means you never miss a lead during business hours.

Step three: create a system for off-hours. Leads don’t stop coming at 5pm. The homeowner with the overflowing toilet at 9pm needs to hear from someone. Auto-text with a morning callback promise, an answering service, or an AI agent that can schedule appointments.

Step four: track your response times. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Most CRMs can report on time-to-first-contact. If yours can’t, track it manually for a month.

Read more about the 5-minute rule for speed to lead.

The invisible advantage

Every contractor competes on price, reviews, and advertising spend. Those are visible, so everyone optimizes for them.

Response time is invisible. Your competitor doesn’t know how fast you respond. Customers rarely say “I hired you because you called first.”

Speed is asymmetric. You can be dramatically better without competitors realizing why they’re losing deals. The contractors who figure this out see conversion jumps of 50-100% on the same lead flow.

Price matters when you’re one of several options being compared. When you’re the only one who showed up, price matters a lot less.