What is speed to lead?
Leads go cold fast, so the first reply counts
Speed to lead is how quickly you respond to a new inquiry. The studies below all point the same way: minutes matter more than hours.
The numbers most people quote come from Harvard Business Review in 2011. Its authors sent a test inquiry through the websites of 2,241 US companies: 23% never replied, and the ones that replied within 30 days took 42 hours on average. In a separate study of 1.25 million leads, firms that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that tried an hour later.
The Lead Response Management study, run by James Oldroyd with InsideSales.com on more than 15,000 leads, went down to the minute: the odds of qualifying a lead fell 21-fold when the first call came 30 minutes after the inquiry instead of 5. And little has changed. In 2024 RevenueHero, a sales scheduling company, sent demo requests to 1,000 B2B software companies, and 63.5% never replied.
A lead that sits in a contact form until you check it after work is a lead your competitor calls first. Lead alerts email it to you the moment it arrives, while the customer is still deciding.
Sources: Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review, March 2011; Lead Response Management study (Oldroyd and InsideSales.com); Koushik, "We Tested Lead Response Times Of 1000 B2B Sales Teams", RevenueHero, March 2024
How it works
From a chat to your inbox in seconds
The assistant takes their details
It asks for a name, a phone number or email, and what they need, one question at a time, and never promises a callback without a number to call.
You get an email
Straight away, at any hour: who they are, how to reach them, what they need, where and when, plus the page they asked from and the site or Google ad that brought them. Emergencies are marked urgent.
Tap “Got it”
One tap from the alert stops the reminders, for everyone who received it. If nobody taps it during opening hours, you're reminded after 5 minutes, and your backup contact is told after 15.
What it does
Alerts that respect your hours and still catch emergencies
Email alerts, to up to five people
Every alert goes to the email address you choose, and up to four more people can get their own copy. When one of you taps “Got it”, it's marked as handled for everyone. The email's reply-to is the customer, so you can answer from your inbox. Text alerts are coming soon.
Alerts in Slack, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat
Paste a channel's incoming-webhook address on Integrations and each new lead, booking and request to speak to you is posted there as well, after the email. Reminders stay in email.
Where each lead came from
The alert names the page the customer asked from and what brought them: the referring site, a Google ad or the campaign tags on your link. The same details are on the lead, in the CSV download and in the webhook.
Your own questions and your service area
Add up to three questions for the assistant to ask customers who want to go ahead, and their answers arrive with the lead. List the ZIP codes and towns you serve, and the alert says whether the customer is inside your area or outside it.
Quiet overnight
Out of hours, and on a holiday you've marked as closed, you still get the first alert, but reminders wait until you open. Choose to be woken for emergencies if your business takes emergency calls.
A backup contact
Add a second email address. If a lead is still unanswered 15 minutes after the first alert during opening hours, they're told too.
Know when alerts fail
Home warns you if leads have nowhere to go, or if alerts couldn't be delivered, instead of letting leads go quiet.
Send leads to your other tools
Add a webhook and each new lead is sent to Zapier, Make, your CRM, a Google Sheet or your own system as signed JSON, with retries if it doesn't get through. Or download your leads as a CSV file from the Leads page.
Junk stays out
Mark a spam lead as junk and it stops reminders and stays out of your counts and your results.
In practice
An evening inquiry, start to finish
- Half my outlets stopped working. Can someone come tomorrow?
- I can get that booked in. What's your name and the best number to reach you?
Asks for details before promising contact
- Sam Carter, (555) 010-0123. We're in Oak Park.
- New lead (Bright Spark Electric): Sam Carter (555) 010-0123 / half the outlets stopped working, Oak Park, tomorrow / Asked from: /emergency-electrician, came from a Google ad / Got it: [link]
Sent right away, with the page and ad it came from; reminders wait for opening time
What it won't do
What lead alerts don't cover
Alerts get the lead to you fast. What happens next is yours.
- It doesn't connect natively to HubSpot, Salesforce or other CRMs. Use the webhook, directly or through Zapier or Make.
- You can't reply to the customer from the dashboard. Call or email them yourself.
- It shows where each lead came from, but it doesn't total leads by page or campaign. The CSV download has the columns if you want to.
- It sends one webhook per website, for new leads only.
- Every recipient gets every alert. Alerts can't be routed to particular staff by service or area, and Slack, Teams and Google Chat are the only chat apps.
- A lead is marked outside your area only from a ZIP or postal code. A town that isn't on your list is left unmarked for you to judge.
Questions
Speed to lead questions
Do lead alerts cost extra?
No. Email alerts to up to five people, alerts in Slack, Teams or Google Chat, the backup contact and the webhook come with every plan today, the Free plan included. See what each plan includes.
Will it wake me up at night?
Only if you ask it to. Out of hours you get the first alert but no reminders until you open. If you take emergency calls, you can choose to be reminded about urgent leads overnight. More on after-hours answering.
How fast will I get the alert?
Straight away. The alert goes out the moment the conversation has a name, a way to reach them and what they need.
Can alerts go to more than one person?
Yes, to five. Your main email address and up to four others each get every alert, and one tap on “Got it” by any of them stops the reminders for all. A channel in Slack, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat can get new leads too. A backup contact is told when a lead is still unanswered after 15 minutes of your opening hours. There's no routing to individual staff yet.
Can new leads go into my CRM?
Yes, through the webhook. Paste a URL from Zapier, Make, your CRM or your own system, and each new lead is sent as signed JSON with retries. There's a button to send a test lead. Step-by-step guides cover HubSpot, Salesforce and Google Sheets.
What is a speed to lead system?
Anything that gets a new inquiry in front of someone who can reply within minutes: an alert, a routing rule, an automatic first reply. Here it's the chat itself replying at once, then an email alert for the person who closes the job.
Why is speed to lead important?
Because leads cool fast. In the same Harvard Business Review research, firms that tried to reach a lead within an hour were more than 60 times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited 24 hours or longer.
What is a good lead response time?
Lead response time is how long you take to reply to a new inquiry, and a good one is measured in minutes. That's why the reminder comes 5 minutes into your opening hours. Your dashboard shows which leads are still waiting on you.
Keep exploring
Other features
- Answers from your websiteReplies from your own pages and documents, and says when it doesn't know.
- BookingsYour booking page or Google Calendar, right in the chat.
- Handoff to youPasses the conversation to you when a person should answer.
- Test and correctCheck its answers before customers see them.
- ResultsWhat it adds, measured against visitors who never saw it.
- Chat widget and pageA chat bubble for your site and a link to share anywhere.