First response time: How to win over customers with quick replies

If there’s one thing that can make or break a business, it’s how long a customer gets left on read.

When a customer reaches out for help or simply has a question, long wait times can quickly impact your business’s bottom line. According to The 2022 Sprout Social Index™, 36% of consumers will share a negative support experience with friends and family, 31% won’t complete their purchase and 30% will buy from a competitor instead.

For support teams, first response time (FRT), also called first reply time, for each customer inquiry is usually that make-or-break moment. This metric can draw a direct line from the level of customer care someone receives to if they remain a loyal customer.

This article will explore the importance of FRT, how to calculate it and strategies to improve it.

What is first response time?

First response time is the time it takes for a company to respond to a customer inquiry or issue from the moment it’s received.

Optimizing FRT is essential as it sets the tone for the entire customer experience. According to The Index, 76% of customers notice and appreciate when a company prioritizes customer support. A quick first reply to an inbound message can improve customer satisfaction, but a slow one can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction with your brand.

How to calculate FRT?

There are two key pieces of data a customer service team needs to calculate first response time:

• Time taken to open and respond to a customer request during a specific period
• Number of responses sent in that particular time

Let’s say an online clothing store opens 120 support cases throughout the week. When you add all of its first response times together, it equals 15,000 seconds. The store can find its FRT using this calculation:

Sum of First Response Times / Total Number of Cases = Average First Response Time

So we get: 15000 / 120 = 125 seconds average first response time per case.

However, this calculation may not accurately reflect the brand’s FRT. It must also consider:

• Using medians over averages. Median first response times are more stable indicators of FRT than averages as they’re less likely to skew the final result. For example, the store’s dataset might have four FRTs of three minutes and only one with 30 seconds. An average first response time would show two minutes and thirty seconds, but the average calculation of three minutes is more accurate of how quickly the customer service team responded to cases.
• Regular business hours. The first response time should be calculated based on normal operating hours and exclude times when the customer service team isn’t available. Let’s say the team works from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. and a customer inquiry is sent at 10 p.m. If it is answered at 8:05 a.m. the following day, the FRT for the ticket is five minutes, not 10 hours and five minutes.
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs). If the team has set SLAs, this calculation will also consider if it’s reaching the response time goals and benchmarks set for the team to hit.

These nuances mean FRTs will depend on every company’s circumstances, goals and operating hours.

How to improve first response time?

Improving your first response time involves three distinct steps: tracking, training and measuring. Let’s go through each step in detail.

Track your current FRT

Before you improve FRT, you must measure it to see how your team is performing in its response times.

Tracking first reply time enables you to identify patterns and bottlenecks in your response process as well as measure your team’s performance against benchmarks. Depending on your customer service software, this tracking might already be happening in the background.

For example, Sprout’s Inbox Activity Report uses a widget to track Average Time to Action. This monitors how long it takes your team to first respond over a specific time period while considering things like operating hours. It will then calculate an average time to action for your team, along with additional breakdowns for time periods.

Gather reports like the above for every channel you use to respond to customer inquiries.

Learn the expected benchmarks for FRT

Understanding industry benchmarks for FRT helps set realistic targets for your team while keeping customers happy.

Our Index data shows nearly 70% of consumers expect a brand to reply within 24 hours, with 76% of respondents saying they value how quickly a brand can respond to their needs.

However, research from Klaus found only 20% of customer service teams are tracking first response time.

The best way to tackle this step is to identify the channels your customer service team is using to answer inquiries, and gather benchmarks for FRT for your industry.

Train your customer care teams to prioritize FRT

According to the Index, only 30% of brands have a customer care process and tools in place to actively engage with customers on social media.

This leaves brands open to negative feedback and sentiment if a customer decides to use social media instead of email or a chatbot to make a complaint. A solid social media process to respond to customers quickly allows a brand to be covered across all bases.

However, it’s not enough to just have a social media process in place. Training your customer service team to prioritize FRT across all channels and get back to customers in their expected reply window is crucial. Your support team should be comfortable dealing with complex inquiries, understand expectations around response formats and how to escalate cases when necessary.

Get your team on the same page with FRT expectations. Use our customer care training deck to educate them on the importance of quick responses and equip them with the strategies they need to hit your targets.

Set your FRT improvement goals

Establish clear goals your customer service team must meet to achieve your desired first response time by setting service level agreements (SLAs).

These agreements set expectations around the service and responsibilities of your support team and connect key performance indicators to their efforts. To set FRT improvement goals, attach SLAs or timeframes to first-time inquiry replies to hold the support team accountable for their response time.

A baseline FRT is calculated from previous data and industry benchmarks and then added to your SLA using a target goal and timeframe.

Let’s say an SLA sets a first response time goal of responding to customer inquiries within four hours or less. If your support team responds to every inbound inquiry within that timeframe, your SLA adherence is 100%.

Also consider whether having separate SLAs for different customer support channels makes sense. For example, a baseline first response time goal for live chat would be two minutes or less, but it could be 30 minutes or less for a DM on Instagram. Be realistic about what infrastructure you have in place to help your support team respond on each platform promptly.

Use AI in a smart way

According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, 93% of leaders believe increased investment in AI and machine learning (ML) will be crucial for scaling customer care functions. AI can streamline customer inquiries and make it easier for customer support teams to manage cases and improve first response time.

Let’s say a customer support team is trying to improve its first response time, but they must also juggle different languages in their replies depending on how each customer interacts with them.

Using Sprout’s Enhance by AI makes it easy to personalize customer conversations and hit the right tone with every reply. Once a reply has been drafted, Enhance by AI Assist takes the copy and transforms it into four different stylistic tones to choose from in the Smart Inbox.

Build a solid knowledge base so team members can find information quickly

A comprehensive knowledge base enables your team to quickly find any information they need to resolve customer issues efficiently. This information not only enhances the quality of responses, it can also be used to train AI chatbots to deal with customer inquiries.

One of the best things about building a knowledge base is that it also helps customers independently resolve issues, saving your support team a lot of time and effort. Even if a case does reach your support team’s inbox, a solid knowledge base allows them to reply with a detailed article for the customer to read and hopefully solve their issue.

Ultimately, when agents receive fewer help requests, they can respond to the cases that reach their inbox faster and improve a company’s overall first response time.

FRT is just one piece of your customer service puzzle

First response time is a critical KPI for customer success and can influence customer satisfaction and loyalty to your brand.

By tracking FRT, training your team and setting improvement goals, customer service teams can significantly enhance FRT to keep customers happy. Improvements like using AI and knowledge bases can also bridge the gap between customers and answers to simple inquiries. This frees up your customer service teams to deal with more complex problems.

However, first response time is just one of the key metrics brands can use to give an excellent experience to customers. Customer services teams must also align across every touchpoint, from email to social media, to give customers a seamless experience.

For more about customer expectations, read about social media’s role in customer service and how quality support across social platforms can significantly increase brand loyalty.