Every speed-to-lead statistic on the internet traces back to about eight studies. Most posts cite them without the year, the sample, or the fact that the company that ran the study sells a response tool. This is the table I wanted and couldn't find: each benchmark, what it measured, how big it was, who paid for it, and the link. Then the gaps.
The table
| Industry | Study | Year | Sample | Headline finding | Who ran it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All industries | Lead Response Management study (Oldroyd, MIT) | 2007 | 6 companies, ~15,000 leads, 100,000+ dials | Contact odds 100x higher at 5 min vs 30 min; qualify odds 21x higher | InsideSales.com (dialer vendor) |
| All industries | "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads," HBR | 2011 | 2,241 U.S. companies, audit | 37% responded within 1 hour, 24% took over 24 hours, 23% never; average 42 hours; 7x qualify lift within the hour | Oldroyd, McElheran, Elkington (academic, with InsideSales) |
| All industries | The Ultimate Contact Strategy | 2012 | ~3.5 million leads, 400+ clients | 391% conversion lift when called within 1 minute; 160% in minute 2; 98% in minute 3; 93% of conversions reached by call 6 | Velocify (dialer vendor) |
| All industries, B2B-heavy | Lead Response Report | 2017 | 433 companies, secret shopper | 7% responded within 5 minutes; 55% took 5+ business days | Drift (chat vendor) |
| Insurance (P&C carriers) | Insurance secret-shopper study | 2010 | 25 largest P&C carriers | Average 2.3 days to a phone call; 22 hours to an email; 39% never called | Velocify (dialer vendor) |
| Insurance (independent agencies) | Speed 2 Lead case study | 2020 | 150 independent agencies, secret shopper | 6% within 5 minutes; 30% within 1 hour; 34% never; top performers averaged 3 minutes | AgencyZoom, published by HawkSoft (agency software vendors) |
| Service industries | 2026 Speed-to-Lead Benchmark Report | 2026 | 573 companies, six service industries, survey | 35.4% say 5 minutes is essential; 38% of those miss it; 81.2% of over-an-hour responders report losing leads; 40%+ of inquiries arrive evenings/weekends | Blazeo (lead response vendor) |
| B2B SaaS | 114 B2B companies' lead response times | 2026 | 114 companies, demo-request test | 0 called within 5 minutes; 42% called within 1 hour; 69% never called; average phone response 14 h 29 min | Workato (automation vendor) |
Sources and links are at the end of the post.
How to read it
Two kinds of study. The 2007 and 2012 studies measured outcomes: did the lead get contacted, did it convert, as a function of minutes. Every other row measured behavior: how fast did companies respond when tested. The outcome studies tell you speed matters. The behavior studies tell you almost nobody is fast.
The outcome studies are old. The multipliers everyone quotes are from 2007 and 2012. No one has published a replication at that scale since. I believe the direction; I wouldn't quote the exact multipliers as current.
Almost all are vendor studies. Of the eight rows, seven were run or sponsored by a company selling a response tool. The HBR audit is the closest thing to neutral, and its authors worked with InsideSales. That doesn't make the numbers wrong, but it means every one of them was framed to make slowness look expensive. Discount accordingly, and notice that the discounted version still says the same thing.
The behavior numbers haven't moved in 15 years. 2011: 37% within an hour. 2020 insurance: 30% within an hour. 2026 B2B: 42% called within an hour. The share of companies that never respond sits between 23% and 34% in every audit that measured it, in every industry. Whatever tools were sold in between, the median company didn't get faster.
What is missing
Solar. I couldn't find a published, verifiable solar-specific response-time study. Solar vendors quote the general numbers above. If one exists with a stated sample and method, I'd like to add it.
Pest control and home services, measured. The 2026 Blazeo report covers service industries, but it's a self-reported survey, not a timed test. Nobody has secret-shopped 150 pest control companies the way AgencyZoom secret-shopped 150 agencies. That study would take a week and would be more useful than anything in the table.
Anything under one minute. The Velocify curve stops at minute 1. No public study has measured contact or conversion rate at 10 seconds versus 60 seconds, because until recently nothing could dial that fast at scale.