How fast should a trade firm reply to a new enquiry?

What the research found

• 2,241 US firms were tested. Their average reply took 42 hours, and almost a quarter never replied at all.
• Reply within the hour and you were nearly seven times as likely to reach the decision maker as a firm that waited longer.
• Leave it a day and the firms that answered inside the hour were over sixty times more likely to get that conversation.
• Trade work moves faster still. A homeowner with no hot water often messages three firms and books the first to answer.

What a good first reply says

• Their name, and something that shows you read the message.
• What you need from them: a photo, the postcode, and when suits.
• No price yet. A guess you have to raise later costs more trust than a slower reply.

Hi Sarah, sorry to hear the boiler’s playing up. Can you send a photo of it and the pressure gauge, and your postcode? We can get someone out tomorrow morning.

Where enquiries go cold

• Seven on a Friday evening. Answer on Monday and the customer has had a whole weekend to find someone else.
• A missed call. A text back inside a minute turns a caller who would have tried the next number into a written enquiry.
• Five inboxes. WhatsApp on one phone, web forms in an inbox nobody checks, Facebook messages on the office tablet. Enquiries fall between them.