“Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available representative.”
I know I’m in for a long wait when I get this message from customer service. Twenty minutes later, I’ve done the dishes, folded the laundry, and checked my email — and I’m still being serenaded by a looped selection of elevator music. If I’m lucky, I’ll have the option to request a callback and get on with my day. But even then, I’m never sure when the return call will come.
You can give your customers a better experience by decreasing your first response time. This guide will show you how to transform long wait times into delightful interactions across channels.
What is first response time (FRT)?
First response time (FRT), also called first reply time, is the amount of time it takes someone on your support team to respond to a customer request. It’s often measured in hours, minutes, or seconds.
In general, customers expect quick responses to their requests. HubSpot’s Annual State of Service Report in 2022 found that:
- 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question.
- 60% of customers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less.
FRT is important for every channel. Responding more quickly to support tickets, text messages, phone calls, and social media inquiries makes service more efficient and improves customer retention.
Good first response time benchmarks across channels
So what is a “good” FRT to aim for? That depends on the channel. Here are some benchmark first response times to aim for:
- Email: Between 1 and 4 hours. Keep in mind that most customers expect a reply in 1 hour or less.
- Live chat: 20 seconds or less for 80% of queries. The average response time on support platforms like Zendesk is 1 minute 35 seconds, so if you beat that, you’re ahead of the game.
- Phone call: 20 seconds for 80% of calls to 3 minutes.
- Text message: 15 minutes to 1 hour, max (younger customers expect an answer in a few minutes).
Generally, most customers want to hear back from support the same day they send a request.
How to calculate first response time
It’s easy to work out how your first reply time stacks up to customer expectations. You just need to plug a couple of numbers into this formula:
First response time = sum of first response times ÷ total number of customer support requests
Let’s say a rep replies to five emails in a day:
- Email 1: 20 minutes
- Email 2: 1 hour
- Email 3: 1 hour
- Email 4: 10 minutes
- Email 5: 4 hours
Total time spent: 6.5 hours (or 390 minutes)
Number of emails: 5
Average first response time (FRT): 390 minutes ÷ 5 = 78 minutes (or 1 hour 18 minutes)
Not bad!
It’s as simple as that. Here are a few tips to make your calculations more accurate:
- Use median times rather than average FRT to remove outliers in the data. Median numbers give a more accurate picture of typical performance than average first response time by excluding unusually long or short resolution times.
- Calculate separate first response times for during and after-hours requests. Even when you’re out of the office, customers want to know you got their message and when they can expect to hear back.
- Keep track of FRT in your KPIs, and set realistic targets. Aim to reduce response times to match your customers’ expectations. But be reasonable about what you can do based on your team’s capacity.
8 proven ways to decrease first response time
Now it’s time to make like a fruit ninja and slash those first response times. Fortunately, you won’t splash watermelon juice all over your walls. You’ll just increase customer satisfaction.
Which is no small thing. Improving the customer experience can boost sales revenue and influence purchase decisions.
In other words, the company with the faster first reply time makes the sale. So get to it with these tips.
1. Ensure your team has the right tech stack
Clear oversight into how your team handles conversations helps you track performance. You can spot inefficiencies, pinpoint times of the day when volume spikes, and create a game plan to keep the queue moving.
OpenPhone gives you several tools to manage calls and messages for lower response times.
- With the share phone number feature, multiple team members can call and text from the same line. Everyone stays in the loop with real-time notifications and shared visibility of messages.
- Ring groups can ring each team member on a shared number all at once, randomly, or in a custom order. This keeps first response times short by sending calls to all available reps.
- Internal threads let team members tag each other privately, making it easy to delegate tasks or pass calls to the right person during peak call times.
2. Set up auto-replies
When the number of tickets and incoming messages spike, your customer service team may struggle to keep up. That’s where auto-replies come in. These quick, automated responses keep customers informed and set expectations. This makes customers feel valued instead of leaving them hanging.
With OpenPhone, you can set up custom auto-replies triggered by events like missed or incoming calls, during or after business hours. For example, you might direct customers to your appointment scheduling software so they can book appointments without waiting.
Check out these auto-reply examples for inspiration.
3. Improve your self-serve resources
Self-service tools like blogs, FAQs, and knowledge bases can reduce the volume of customer queries and decrease first response times by making it easy for customers to find answers on their own.
How do you know what to cover in those resources? Start by asking representatives to manually jot down the reasons customers call. When you’re ready to automate the process, use call tags. These help you find trends in call drivers and prioritize what self-service content to create. OpenPhone auto-tags calls with labels like “billing” or “appointment scheduling” (or “the dog ate it”), and representatives can also add their own notes.
For sensitive topics like billing, set up an internal knowledge base. This gives reps a go-to resource so they can quickly answer questions without routing or escalating calls to other team members.
4. Set up backup coverage with an AI agent
An AI agent can answer basic questions or take messages when reps are busy, offering 24/7 support and faster initial responses.
OpenPhone’s AI agent, Sona, integrates with your call flow so your team is free to handle more complex customer questions. You can customize Sona with business details, your products and services, and FAQs to ensure customers get accurate answers. Sona also logs calls and provides detailed summaries for every interaction.
5. Provide omnichannel support
Relying on phone calls alone as a customer support channel often leads to slow response timeframes. Adding communication channels like chat, text, and email gives your customers more options and diverts quick inquiries away from your main numbers.
6. Use automations to reduce after-call work
After-call work like updating customer profiles, scheduling follow-ups, and recording call details can delay first response times. Automations help your team wrap up the work faster so they can move on to the next customer inquiry.
OpenPhone automates this work with several features:
- Call summaries present a list of key points and offer suggested next steps for follow-up. Customer support teams can use these suggestions to schedule tasks or tag other team members for help instead of listening to the entire call again.
- Call transcripts break down what was said on the call by speaker so it’s easier to find specific information. This is handy when a support rep needs more context.
- Integrations link your phone system to popular CRMs like HubSpot and automatically log calls, texts, transcripts, and summaries into customer profiles. Reps save tons of time on manual data entry, avoid errors that can cause bottlenecks, and have more efficient workflows.
7. Coach your team members
Reducing first response time can be as simple as giving team members better resources.
First, use analytics to check if the workload is distributed equally among team members.. If you find that some team members are taking fewer inquiries or working less efficiently, you can coach them to help improve service quality by:
- Pairing new hires with more experienced reps to shadow them as they take calls or review interactions. This provides an opportunity to highlight what went well and make suggestions for improvement.
- Holding team meetings where reps share wins and discuss how they’re improving efficiency on each call.
- Using a customer service scorecard to measure team members’ performance objectively when reviewing call summaries and transcripts. A customer service quality assurance process helps you prioritize who to coach.
- Creating response templates — OpenPhone calls them “snippets” — to speed up interactions like greeting customers or answering common questions.
8. Iterate and improve
Reducing first response time is like making bread: You won’t see the results immediately, but as you monitor progress, you’ll realize something good is happening.
Monitor trends after you make changes to see if you’re going in the right direction. Compare FRT with other KPI metrics like customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) and first call resolution to see if shorter response times are improving overall outcomes.
OpenPhone can help you track your efforts with tools like call views. This shows individual team members’ performance across calls, including duration. The analytics dashboard gives you insight into text message response times. And call tags show which types of inquiries take the longest to handle so you can deploy more automations or self-service options.
OpenPhone: The only phone system you need to decrease first response times
Faster first response times mean your customers won’t have to wait through endless minutes of elevator music as they wonder if anyone will answer. OpenPhone improves the functionality of your support team so you can resolve customer issues within hours — or even minutes.
See the difference for yourself. Try a free, seven-day trial of OpenPhone today.
