# What is lead response time?

> Lead response time is the minutes from receiving a lead to first contacting it. How to measure it from two timestamps and what to track every week.
- **Author**: Marxx
- **Published**: 2026-11-06
- **Category**: Lead generation
- **URL**: https://marxx.ai/library-glossary/lead-response-time

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Lead response time is how long your team takes to first contact a new lead, measured from the moment the lead was received. A lead received at 14:11 and called at 14:35 has a response time of 24 minutes.

## How to measure it

You need two timestamps for every lead.

- **Received:** when the lead arrived. For a Meta lead form, use the time the form was submitted.
- **Contacted:** when someone on your team first called or messaged the person. Log it when it happens, not at the end of the day.

Lead response time = contacted time − received time

Write times in 24-hour format, and keep both in the same time zone. A Dubai team reading leads stamped in India time will be 90 minutes off on every lead.

## A worked example

Say a sales desk gets five leads on a Tuesday.

| Lead | Received | Contacted | Response time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10:02 | 10:06 | 4 min |
| 2 | 11:47 | 11:58 | 11 min |
| 3 | 14:11 | 14:35 | 24 min |
| 4 | 16:30 | 16:38 | 8 min |
| 5 | 19:52 | 09:15 next day | 803 min |

The average is 170 minutes. The middle value (the median) is 11 minutes, closer to how most leads were treated. One evening lead pulled the average up.

## What to track every week

Your target comes from [speed to lead](/glossary/speed-to-lead), the habit of reaching people while they are still warm. The weekly numbers tell you whether you kept it.

1. **Median response time.** The middle lead's wait. It ignores one or two extreme cases.
2. **Share within target.** If the target is 15 minutes, what share of leads got a call inside 15 minutes? Above, 3 of 5 did, so 60%.
3. **Slowest leads.** List the five slowest and ask why.
4. **Never contacted.** Leads with no contacted time at all. You paid for them, and each one raises your real [cost per acquisition](/glossary/cpa).
5. **Office hours vs after hours.** Split the numbers so a night gap does not hide a good day shift.

Response time only improves if leads reach a person fast. Our [Facebook lead notifications in Slack guide](/guides/how-to-get-facebook-lead-notifications-in-slack) covers how. We make Marxx. Its Slack lead messages show the time each lead was received, and Mark contacted shows who reached out. See [Marxx in Slack](/features/slack).

## FAQ

### Should I use the average or the median?

Use the median for the headline number, because one overnight lead can swing the average by hours. Keep the average too, since a rising average shows more long waits.

### What counts as contacted?

A real attempt by a person: a call, even unanswered, or a personal message. Decide your rule once and write it in your team's process so everyone logs it the same way.

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