AI can fix your 42-hour reply time

The average business takes 42 hours to reply to a new enquiry. Nearly a quarter never reply at all.

That's from a 2011 Harvard Business Review study that sent test enquiries to 2,241 US companies and timed every answer.

The same research looked at 1.25 million sales leads. Firms that replied within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker than firms that waited one hour longer.

The study is old, but I'd be surprised if a busy small business is any faster today. The enquiry lands while you're on a job, and the reply waits until the evening, or the weekend.

So the first job I'd give AI in most businesses is the first reply.

I set this up as what I call an AI team member: AI that does one specific job alongside your team.

When an enquiry arrives, it reads it and checks it against your service and product information, the way you respond to customers, and a record of how you've answered similar questions before.

If a detail you need is missing, it asks the customer for that one thing. Otherwise it writes a full reply in your voice and saves it as a draft for whoever handles customer support.

That person reads the draft and fixes anything that's off before pressing send. Nothing goes out on its own.

Your customer hears back in minutes, and a person has still checked every word.

Start with the inbox where your new enquiries land. Set up one AI team member there, and time your replies for a fortnight before and after.

Forty-two hours is the average, and it doesn't have to be yours.