By the Kore Komfort Editorial Team | Originally published May 20, 2026 | Source review October 15, 2026.
A web inquiry can sit in your inbox while the customer keeps looking. A faster first call gives your team an earlier chance to talk, but it does not guarantee a job. Set a clear response target, assign the person who owns it and check the timestamps each week.
What the lead response study measured
In 2007, InsideSales.com published a summary of research designed with James Oldroyd. Its call-data analysis used three years of records from six companies, more than 15,000 web leads and more than 100,000 call attempts. The leads had come through web forms and had at least one attempted call. This was not a study of roofing, HVAC or plumbing shops.[1]
The summary reports that the odds of contacting a lead when called at five minutes rather than 30 minutes differed by 100 times; the odds of qualifying a lead differed by 21 times. Those are the study’s reported odds comparisons for its call data, not percentages of customers reached and not a prediction for your shop. Its call-data study expressly did not examine close ratios.[1]
The same PDF describes a separate 2007 survey of 495 companies across more than 40 industries. The authors say that survey alone did not yield a statistically significant answer about the best time to call. Keep the survey and the later call analysis separate when quoting the figures.[1]
The opening of the March 2011 Harvard Business Review article “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” discusses slow responses to online inquiries.[2]
Contact is not conversion
The study’s contact outcome is a reached lead. Qualification is a separate sales-process outcome. A qualified lead is not automatically an estimate appointment, accepted quote, paid job or completed project. The report does not calculate contractor jobs lost to a slow callback.[1]
A customer may contact other companies, but your inbox does not tell you whether someone else booked the job. Do not multiply a study odds ratio by your monthly lead count and call the answer lost revenue. If you want a business estimate, use your own records of inquiries, reached people, qualified requests, appointments, won jobs and realized revenue, with a defined period for each.
Give each inquiry a clear owner
Route each website form and missed-call notice to a person who is on duty. Include the received time, contact details and stated service so they can respond without searching for the request. Use a backup owner when the first person is on a job or away from the phone. Test the notice with a sample inquiry and confirm it reaches the assigned phone.
A five-minute first attempt during staffed hours is a useful internal target, not a proven contractor threshold. Give the responder a short opener: “Hi, this is [name] with [company]. I saw your request about [service]. Is now a good time to talk?” Ask where the work is and when the customer needs help. Confirm the next step only after you know your team can take the work.
If nobody answers, record the call attempt. Leave a voicemail or send a follow-up message only through channels the customer has agreed to use and your business is set up to handle. Set a callback task rather than marking an unanswered call as contact. An automated acknowledgment can confirm that a form arrived, but it cannot establish a live conversation.
Handle after-hours requests honestly
Decide who handles urgent calls outside staffed hours before you publish an emergency promise. If nobody is available, the message should say when your team will return and when you will call back. A live answering service may help with intake, but check its script, handoff and actual bill before relying on it. The study does not set a price or prove that one captured job pays for the service.
Test your own after-hours form and phone route. Check the time of the inquiry, whether the acknowledgment arrived and whether the next-day callback happened. Keep automatic replies apart from human first attempts in the report.
Run a 30-day response check
- Export the past 30 days of new website inquiries and missed calls with received timestamps. Mark test, spam and duplicate records under one written rule. Keep unattempted eligible inquiries in the five-minute share denominator.
- For each eligible inquiry, record the first human outbound attempt, whether a person was reached, whether the request qualified for your services, whether an appointment was set and whether a job was won. Leave unknown outcomes as unknown.
- Subtract received time from first human attempt time for attempted inquiries. Report the median minutes among attempted inquiries and, separately, the number attempted within five minutes divided by all eligible inquiries. Report the unattempted count alongside both.
- Split staffed-hours and after-hours inquiries. Check a small sample of timestamps and handoffs each week; fix broken routing before buying another tool.
For example, if your process marks an inquiry “responded” when an autoresponder fires, your first-human-attempt number will look better than the service the customer received. Keep receipt, attempt, live contact, qualification and booking as distinct events. Compare the same definitions month to month.
Frequently asked questions
What does the five-minute lead response finding measure?
The 2007 InsideSales.com/MIT analysis compared calls placed at five minutes versus at 30 minutes after a web form. It reported a 100-fold difference in odds of contact and a 21-fold difference in odds of qualification. It did not measure a contractor’s booking or close rate.[1]
Does calling in five minutes guarantee a booked job?
No. Contact means reaching the person; qualification means a lead met the study’s sales criteria. Neither is a booked appointment, won bid or completed job. Use five minutes as a response target to test in your own business, not as a promised conversion rate.[1]
How should I measure response time?
For eligible inquiries with a human attempt, report the median minutes from receipt to first attempt. Divide the number attempted within five minutes by all eligible inquiries to get the five-minute share. Report the count of eligible inquiries with no human attempt separately. A call that went unanswered is an attempt, not a reached contact. Split these measures between staffed and after-hours inquiries.
Do automated texts count as a response?
Track them separately. An automatic acknowledgment confirms receipt but is not a human attempt, a live contact or a qualified conversation. Record its timestamp and the promised callback time, then check whether your team followed through.
What should happen after hours?
Acknowledge the request if your messaging setup permits it, state the actual callback window and route urgent requests according to your staffed coverage. Do not promise someone will answer overnight unless someone is assigned to do it. Measure after-hours inquiries separately from staffed hours.
Can I turn the study’s call odds into expected revenue?
No. The 2007 call analysis measured odds of contact and qualification, not close ratios, booked jobs or revenue. Use your own sales records to estimate revenue; the study does not supply a contractor conversion rate.[1]
Sources
[1] InsideSales.com and James Oldroyd, Lead Response Management executive summary, 2007. Read source.
[2] James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011. Read source.
Commercial disclosure: KKS sells website services for contractors. KKS previously used affiliate links in its articles. This page has no affiliate purchase links.
Check the path from inquiry to first response
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