01The audit's findings
In 2011 James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington published The Short Life of Online Sales Leads in Harvard Business Review. They submitted web leads to 2,241 US companies and timed the replies.
| Time to first reply | Share of companies |
|---|---|
| Within one hour | 37% |
| One to 24 hours | 16% |
| More than 24 hours | 24% |
| Never replied | 23% |
Among the companies that replied within 30 days, the average first reply took 42 hours.
02The five-minute figure
The best-known figure comes from the Lead Response Management study: a lead contacted within five minutes was 21 times more likely to qualify than one contacted after thirty. It has the same lead researcher as the audit above, and a company that sells lead-response software sponsored it. Treat the two studies as one body of work and the 21 times as a direction.
03Limits of the research
- It measured US companies in 2011. It did not measure the UAE or Egypt.
- It measured web-form leads. A WhatsApp message arrives in a chat app, and the buyer expects a reply at chat speed.
- It did not isolate property sales, where one lead can be worth a large commission and the buyer often messages several brokerages.
We have not found a study that measures property-lead response times on WhatsApp in either market. If you know of one, send it to yassin@kadensio.com.
04Measure your own brokerage
Your WhatsApp history already holds the answer.
- Take the last 30 days of inbound leads.
- For each lead, write down when the buyer first messaged and when a person first replied. WhatsApp shows both timestamps in the chat.
- Work out the median first reply, not the average. A few leads that waited three days will distort an average.
- Count the share of leads that got a reply within five minutes, within an hour, and not at all within 24 hours.
- Split the list by hour of day and by weekday against weekend to find where replies slow down.
Two numbers are worth tracking every month: the median first reply, and the share of leads with no reply after 24 hours.
05A reply in seconds
This is a sample timeline for one lead, taken from the fastest run we measured: 30 seconds from the first message to a booked viewing, on the live system through the production Meta API.
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 02:00:04 | The buyer's message arrives on your WhatsApp number. |
| 02:00:05 | The buyer picks English. |
| 02:00:24 | Kadensio records nine answers. |
| 02:00:25 | The lead scores 93, hot, with a written reason for each factor. |
| 02:00:26 | Routing sends it to the salesperson who covers the project and speaks English. |
| 02:00:34 | Kadensio books the viewing in your Google Calendar. |
Kadensio does not close the sale and does not phone the buyer. A salesperson still runs the viewing. The first reply, the qualification and the booking no longer wait for someone to wake up. See how the score works.
Send it a message at any hour
The live number answers the way it would answer a buyer. Or get early access for your brokerage. Related: official and unofficial WhatsApp automation.