How fast do businesses reply to a new enquiry? Our 2-week test across 5 industries

Short answer: we don't know yet, and neither do most owners. That's the point of this test. For two weeks, from October 21 to November 3, 2026, we'll send ordinary enquiries to businesses in five industries around Mumbai and note how many minutes pass before a real person replies. This page gets updated as the numbers come in.

Why reply time

Most of the businesses we talk to grow on enquiries: a call, a WhatsApp message, a form on the website. When we ask where growth is stuck, the answer is usually "we need more leads". When we look closer, the leads are often already there. They just wait too long for an answer, and by the time someone replies, the customer has booked with whoever answered first.

So before we sell anyone more marketing, we want to measure the thing that comes first: how fast an enquiry gets a real reply.

What we got wrong first

This test exists because our own outreach didn't work. We messaged 31 clinics with a polite note about their enquiry handling. We got zero replies.

Looking back, the message asked them to trust our opinion about a problem they couldn't see. So we changed the approach. Now we measure first, and only then reach out, with their own number in hand.

How the test works

Step	What we do
1. Check	Send a normal enquiry, the kind a customer would send, to 2 businesses per industry each working day
2. Measure	Note the minutes until the first real reply. An auto-reply doesn't count
3. Share	The next day, write to the slow ones (over 30 minutes, or no reply) with what we saw
4. Follow up	Once on day 3 and once on day 7, then stop

Over ten working days that's about 20 checks per industry.

The five industries

1. Real estate: channel partners and small to mid builders around Ulwe, Panvel and Kharghar. One sale can be worth lakhs, and buyers often go with whoever calls back first.
2. Premium clinics: dental implants and aligners, hair, skin, IVF. Patients tend to book the first clinic that replies.
3. Interior designers and modular kitchens: big projects, with enquiries that often arrive cold from Instagram.
4. Wedding venues and banquet halls: date enquiries usually go to whoever sends a quote first.
5. Study-abroad consultants: one student can be worth a large fee, and families compare several consultants at once.

We picked these five because a slow reply costs them the most. Real estate and interiors share the same customer, someone moving into a new flat, so if both do well we'll treat them as one.

What we'll count

• Checks sent per industry
• Slow repliers: the share that took over 30 minutes or never replied
• Replies to our message sharing what we saw
• Calls booked

On November 4 we'll pick the industry with the most calls booked and focus on it. Anything with no calls by November 3 gets dropped, not kept "just in case".

Updates

Oct 19, 2026: The test is set up. Lead lists are checked and ready, and the first checks go out on October 21. Numbers will appear here every few days.