RESEARCH · GUIDE
How to check your own reply times in 20 minutes.
You don’t need new software to find out how fast your business really replies. You need a spreadsheet and thirty emails.
1. Pick thirty enquiries
Search your enquiries inbox for the last two or three months and take the thirty most recent genuine enquiries. Skip spam and suppliers. If enquiries also arrive through a platform or a website form, include those too, because they’re often the slowest.
2. Write down three times
In a spreadsheet, one row per enquiry: the date and time it arrived, the date and time of the first reply written by a person (not an automatic acknowledgement), and whether it booked. Add a column for the day of the week.
3. Work out three numbers
Reply time in hours for each row, then the middle value (use MEDIAN, not the average, so one very slow reply doesn’t swamp everything). The share answered within an hour. And the share that arrived in the evening or at the weekend.
For reference, a supplier to UK venues reports an average first reply of about 47 hours 1. Studies of US companies found the chance of reaching someone drops sharply after the first hour 2.
4. Look at the ones that booked
Compare reply times for the enquiries that booked with the ones that didn’t. With thirty rows it won’t be conclusive, but if the booked ones were answered much faster, you’ve found something worth looking at properly.
What this means for a business
- If most enquiries arrive out of hours, an honest acknowledgement that same evening is the cheapest improvement there is.
- If you can’t tell from your records which enquiries booked, that’s the first thing to fix.
What we don’t know
- Thirty enquiries can’t tell you how much faster replies would add. A fair test, with some enquiries handled the old way, can.
Sources
- Claim VenueBot, 2026 state of UK wedding venue enquiries · Supplier data, method not published
- Fact Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, Harvard Business Review, March 2011 · US companies