Most speed-to-lead statistics are made up. I checked.

If you have read anything about answering customer inquiries faster, you have run into this line. 78% of customers buy from the first company that responds.

There is no study behind it. Here is where it actually came from.

Where the famous numbers came from

“78% of customers buy from the first company to respond.” The trail ends at a sales page from 2006 that said 58% and cited nothing. The number climbed over the next 20 years. Most versions today credit a report called Lead Connect. No such report exists, and that company’s website was a parked domain in every archived copy.

“80% of sales require 5 follow-ups.” This traces to a survey of fewer than 40 members of a sales club on Long Island. The survey was run in 1942 and never published.

“44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up.” Never measured. In the 2009 article everyone copies, the 44% referred to people who gave up after hearing one no.

“100 times more likely, according to Harvard.” This one is real research, misattributed. It comes from a 2007 study run by a company that sold sales software. It measured whether a lead could be reached and qualified, not whether a sale closed. The comparison is 5 minutes against 30 minutes, not the 5 against 10 that usually gets quoted.

There are others. A McKinsey figure that McKinsey never published. “62% of business calls go unanswered,” with no study, sample or author attached anywhere. Response-time numbers for roofing, HVAC and weddings that do not exist.

These spread because they get repeated by companies selling software that makes you answer faster. A number that flatters the product gets passed along without a check.

What has actually been measured

Clay, September 2026. They submitted 6,346 contact forms to businesses in 100 countries and waited. 68% never replied. Of the replies that did arrive, 64% were automated. Out of 1,281 automated replies, 4 were written for the person who asked.

Pied Piper, April 2026. Pied Piper is an independent mystery shopping firm rather than a software company, so it has nothing to sell with these numbers. Shoppers posed as customers comparing three companies and ran 3,211 evaluations across 31 home services brands, ServiceMaster Restore among them. There was no follow-up of any kind 72% of the time. An appointment was offered 28% of the time.

Workato, March 2026. They timed 114 B2B companies. Over 99% did not respond within 5 minutes. One company out of 114 sent a personal email that fast, and none of them called.

AI is not automatically the fix

The Pied Piper shoppers reached an AI system about 10% of the time. 27% of those conversations were resolved. 73% still needed a person, and a third of the handoffs to a person failed after the customer had spent an average of 93 seconds with the machine.

So a business owner in this market may have already tried AI on their inquiries and watched it lose customers.

What the real numbers mean

The invented statistics all point the same way. Be faster than your competitor.

That assumes your competitor replied. Usually nobody did. 68% never answer and 72% never follow up, so the thing you are actually competing against is silence.

That lowers the bar a long way. You do not have to win a race against a well run company. You have to answer at all, and sound like a person when you do.

Find out your own number

Fill in your own contact form. Use a personal email address so nobody recognizes you, and do it on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Then time the reply, read it, and ask whether it answered the question you asked.

Most owners find the answer is no. Your own result matters more than any figure in this article. It is the one your customers are getting.

Fix what the reply says, not how fast it goes out

A message that only says “thank you for your submission” tells the customer that a machine caught their inquiry and no person has it yet. Sending that in 30 seconds instead of an hour changes nothing. What has to change is what the message says.

One more thing

If the 78% line is on your website or in a sales presentation, take it down. A customer who checks it will start checking everything else you have said.

Quillway sets up personal replies to the inquiries small businesses already get. If you want that handled for you, send me one and watch what comes back.