Does HVAC speed to lead decide who wins the job?

You have probably heard that the first HVAC company to call back wins the job. The research for this article found no HVAC study that links lead response time to booked or won jobs. The most quoted speed-to-lead numbers come from a different kind of study. That study measured whether a lead could be reached and qualified, not whether it bought.

I'm Joel Keith, CEO of ASP. In my opinion, answering fast is still worth the effort, and Google's own ad rules give HVAC companies a current reason to care. This article separates what the research shows from what is only repeated.

Where does the "21 times" speed-to-lead number come from?

The figure comes from the Lead Response Management Study, an InsideSales.com study dated October 2007. The PDF carries a 2009 InsideSales.com copyright. Its research division produced it. It was presented by InsideSales.com CEO David Elkington and James Oldroyd, PhD, then a visiting research fellow at MIT. In the study, InsideSales.com describes itself as "a leading provider of B2B power dialer technology and lead management."

The study looked at three years of data from six companies that generate and respond to web leads. That covered more than 15,000 leads and more than 100,000 call attempts. The study does not say which years, and it does not name the six companies or their industries.

Its main timing findings were:

• The odds of contacting the lead dropped 100 times when it was called at 30 minutes instead of 5.
• The odds of qualifying the lead dropped 21 times when it was called at 30 minutes instead of 5.
• From 5 minutes to 10 minutes, the odds of qualifying a lead per dial fell 4 times.
• In the first hour, contact odds fell more than 10 times and qualification odds fell more than 6 times.
• After 20 hours, the study says each additional dial hurt the ability to make contact and qualify a lead.

The study defines a qualification as the stage where the lead "is willing to enter the sales process." In some cases that meant setting an appointment with a sales rep, and each company had its own definition.

What did the 2007 study not measure?

It did not measure sales. The study says it "was designed to identify what day of week, time of day and time from creation to call back a web-generated lead for optimal contact and qualification rates." The next sentence is, "This study did not address close ratios."

The study also warns about its own patterns. It says Dr. Oldroyd found the clear patterns only when data from several companies was combined. It adds, "Patterns vary significantly from company to company." That matters if you try to apply the results to one HVAC shop.

The same researchers later wrote about the topic in the Harvard Business Review. "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads" ran in March 2011, by James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington. Its public summary says "most companies are not responding nearly fast enough." The author note lists Elkington as chairman and CEO of InsideSales.com. The article's figures are behind a paywall, so this article does not use them.

A claim that 78% of customers buy from the company that responds first is also common. The research for this article could not trace it to an original study with a stated method.

Where does response time count for HVAC companies today?

Google's Local Services Ads are the clearest current case. Google's ad ranking help page says ranking includes how likely your ad is to result in a lead. That includes "your responsiveness to customer inquiries and requests." Google adds, "Missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness." The page gives no weight or time limit for responsiveness.

The same page lists average response time as part of profile quality, along with rating and number of reviews. Google says higher-quality profiles "may rank higher and may also pay lower costs per lead." It also says turning on message or booking leads "can increase the likelihood of receiving a lead, especially during nights and weekends when you can't answer the phone."

Google's page on responding to leads is direct. "It's highly recommended that you respond to leads as soon as they come in," it says. It adds that a consistently fast response time "could improve your ad's ranking on search and increase your ability to receive leads."

Google may also show your speed to customers. If you have 2 or more message leads in the last 90 days, estimated message response times may appear in your ads. Estimates range from "a few minutes" to "one day." If you set business hours, Google calculates the average during those hours over the last 90 days and weights recent leads more. If you don't set hours, it uses leads received between 7 AM and 9 PM.

Returning calls also affects billing. Google's page on how leads work says a missed call without a voicemail can become a valid lead. That happens when you return it by text, email or call and either reach the customer or leave a voicemail. Our comparison of Google Ads and Local Services Ads covers how LSA charges work. Reviews also feed profile quality, and our guide to getting more Google reviews within the rules covers how to ask.

Does Google Business Profile still have chat?

Google no longer offers the old chat feature. Google's help page says, "As of July 31, 2024, the chat and call history features are no longer available in your Business Profile." Any advice about a Business Profile chat response badge is out of date.

Google's current chat option lets verified profiles add a WhatsApp or text messaging option to their contact info, in select regions only. That page states no response-time metric or ranking effect for the option. The research for this article found no current Business Profile help page that describes a response-time signal.

What does vendor data say about HVAC reply times?

One software vendor has published HVAC data, and it should be read as a vendor dataset. Hatch sells AI customer service and lead-response software to home service businesses. Its blog post was first published December 1, 2024 and updated August 6, 2026. It analyzed 132,188 Speed to Lead campaigns launched for HVAC businesses using Hatch over "the last 6 months." The post does not say which six months. Each campaign needed at least 100 launches and 100 responses.

Hatch reports that 88% of users, or 941 of 1,071, took more than 5 minutes to reply to leads. The most common reply times were 1 day (37% of users) and 30 minutes (33%). Only 3% of users replied in less than a minute. Two limits apply. The sample is Hatch's own users, not the HVAC industry. The metric is how fast a rep replied after a contact answered an automated campaign message. It is not the time to first contact with a new lead, and the post does not count booked or sold jobs.

How can an HVAC company respond to leads faster?

Since the research for this article found no HVAC study that ties speed to jobs won, my advice is to track both in your own business. These steps follow from Google's own pages and from my opinion about coverage:

1. Set your business hours in Local Services Ads, since Google uses them to estimate your response time.
2. Return every missed LSA call, and know that a returned call can become a charged lead.
3. Turn on message or booking leads if your account offers them.
4. Decide who covers nights and weekends, whether that is an on-call person, an answering service or an AI answering tool.
5. Log each lead's response time and whether it booked, so you can test the link yourself.

If you run scheduling in a field service platform such as Housecall Pro (affiliate link), check that online booking and instant new-job alerts are turned on if it offers them, because they decide how fast a request reaches your team.

At ASP, the two places I see owners start are AI consulting for home-service businesses and a lead follow-up system that records what happens to each lead. That is my view, not a research finding. The research supports a narrower point. Google rewards responsiveness in Local Services Ads, and the 2007 InsideSales.com study measured contact and qualification, not sales.

For more on running the business side of an HVAC company, see the Owner's Desk.