I have been trying to track reps lead response time from when a lead fills out a form to when the first call/email/meeting is done. There is a field in reporting for lead response time but when I incorporate it the data is not following the actual timeline. For example, I had a lead call in over the phone and I filled out an internal intake form. The first activity was a call I logged and emails I sent out to confirm our meetings 8 minutes after the call and the report is showing 7.6 days as the avg lead response time. I am not sure if it is accounting for the first activity or for all activities. I mainly want to be tracking my agerage first acitivity to make sure it is under an hour. Does anyone have insight on how to track this better or about how the lead response property works??
Hi @SaraC9712,
HubSpot’s lead response time property can be tricky. It’s meant to show how fast you follow up, but it doesn’t always reflect real activity — especially if you’re logging calls manually or using internal forms.
HubSpot calculates the time it took the current owner to do first qualifying engagement (ms) (see this article).
But:
- Manually logged activities (especially after-the-fact) can be ignored
- Internal submissions might skew the contact create date
- It doesn’t always use the activity you’d expect as “first”
As an alternative you could use HubSpot Workflows + a Custom Date Property
Set up a custom “First Contacted” date property and use a workflow to timestamp it when a rep sends the first email, logs a call, or books a meeting.
You can then use a calculated property to track response time between form submission and first contact.
I hope this helps,
Jess
This was very insightful. Thank you!
I kind of figured I might need to just make a manual property but the idea with the workflow updating it for me is a great idea to reduce manual input.
I’ll mess around with this a bit and let you know if I have any more questions.
Hi @SaraC9712,
HubSpot actually has an out of the box report for this in the Sales Analytics tool (available in Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise). Navigate to Reports > Analytics Tools > Sales Analytics > Lead response time:
View the average amount of time it takes for a contact owner to take a qualifying action on a newly assigned contact. Qualifying actions include sending an email, calling, using chat, recording a meeting outcome, or marking a task as in progress or completed.
If this definition does not match what you’re trying to do, you could also leverage a calculation property (time between). Create calculation and rollup properties
In this calculation property, you would reference two dates:
- Start date (could be “Create date”, “First conversion date” or, if you have to apply your own logic a custom date property filled by a workflow)
- End date (could be set via workflow)
@SaraC9712 wrote:
I filled out an internal intake form.
Keep in mind that HubSpot expects all form submissions to be external, not internal. Why you can submit a form on behalf of a contact, HubSpot does not differentiate between internal and external. Form submissions are always attributed to the contact themselves.
Hope this helps!
Does the lead response time property account for leads that were assigned over the weekend, when reps are not available for outreach?
We have separate forms that are from the website vs intake forms. That is something I am trying to figure out how to account for.
Hi @SaraC9712 did you ever get this working cleanly?
The key thing I’d separate is HubSpot’s default lead response logic vs the operating definition you actually want: form submitted, first real buyer-facing touch, and whether it happened inside SLA.
I’d avoid counting owner assignment, tasks, internal intake forms, lifecycle changes, or notes as the stop point.
If you’re still trying to solve it, the cleanest setup is usually a custom “SLA start” timestamp, a “first real sales touch” timestamp, and a status for contacted inside SLA / late / not contacted.