What is speed to lead?

The effect is about attention rather than politeness. Someone who has just submitted a form or called about a property is, at that moment, actively thinking about the problem. An hour later they are doing something else, and often have contacted competitors as well.

The consistent finding across sales research is that response time matters disproportionately at the very short end: the difference between one minute and thirty is far larger than between thirty and sixty. This is why automated first response is valuable even when a human follows up later.

It is also the easiest metric in this space to measure honestly. Timestamp every enquiry and every first response for a fortnight, and the distribution will tell you whether you have a problem without any vendor involvement.