Lead response time

Lead response time is the measured gap between a lead arriving and the first reply the business sends. Speed to lead is the idea. Response time is the number: minutes, or hours, or "we got to it the next morning." If you cannot point at the number, you are remembering the calls you felt good about and forgetting the ones that sat.

Count every source the same way. A web form at 7:10 and a missed call at 7:12 are both leads. The reply might be a text, a call, or an email. A voicemail the caller left does not stop the clock. Your response stops the clock. Opening the notification and thinking "I will call them after this job" does not.

The number is only useful if it changes the day. A crew that averages three hours might discover that forms wait until someone is back at a desk, while missed calls get a text. That is a fixable path, not a character flaw. Put the form and the call on one list, assign a person or a rotation, and decide what "first reply" must contain: the company name, the fact that you saw the request, and one question.

Do not average away the bad tail. One lead answered in two minutes and one answered tomorrow can look fine as an average and still lose the second job. Look at the slowest third of the week. Those are the leads that arrived while everyone was driving or up a ladder. The fix is a list someone can see from the truck, plus a text that goes out when the call is missed.

Puffly records the lead when it arrives, from a form or from a missed call, and the list is the place to see who is still waiting. The response time is yours to keep short. The software's job is to stop the lead from hiding.