How fast should a landscaper reply to an enquiry?
The honest answer, the research behind it, and what it means when you're on the tools all day.
Within minutes if you can, and inside an hour at the very least. The best-known study on this, published in Harvard Business Review in 2011, found that firms which replied to a lead within an hour were about seven times more likely to qualify it than firms that waited two hours. Most landscaping enquiries go to several businesses at once, so the reply window is a race rather than a deadline.
What the research actually says
The study most people mean is by James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington, published in Harvard Business Review in 2011 as "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads". They audited how 2,241 US firms responded to web leads, and analysed 1.25 million leads.
The headline finding: firms that replied within an hour were about seven times more likely to qualify the lead than firms that waited two hours. In the study, qualifying meant getting a meaningful conversation with the person who makes the decision, not just sending a reply.
Closer to home, 45% of Australian construction businesses say slow replies have cost them work (CommBank and OpenAI small business survey, September 2026). And on Word of Mouth, Melbourne landscapers take 122 hours on average to respond to a quote request (wordofmouth.com.au, October 2026). That is the best part of a week.
Treat the HBR figure as directional rather than gospel. It is not a landscaping study, and it looked at US firms more than a decade ago. What it shows is the shape of the problem, which matches what any tradie already knows from the ones that got away.
Why it's worse in green trades than most
Two things stack up. First, nobody rings one landscaper. They open the map, and they contact three or four in the same sitting, which means you are not being judged against a deadline, you are being judged against the other people they messaged.
Second, the work physically prevents you from answering. You cannot take a call over a running mower, or from the bottom of a trench, or with gloves on in a garden bed. That is not a discipline problem and no amount of trying harder fixes it.
The evening problem nobody plans for
A large share of garden care and landscaping enquiries arrive after five, from people who have sat down after work and finally decided to do something about the backyard. Those are the highest-intent enquiries you get all week.
They are also the ones most likely to sit until the next morning, which is fourteen hours of the customer being free to hear back from somebody else.
What good actually looks like
If you want a practical standard rather than a research figure, this is what to aim at.
- Every enquiry acknowledged within a minute, whatever the channel
- The first reply asks what the job is and roughly where, not just 'thanks, we'll be in touch'
- After-hours enquiries answered after hours, not the following morning
- A booking or a next step offered in the first exchange, not the third
Common questions
Within minutes if you can, and inside an hour at the very least. Firms that replied within an hour were about seven times more likely to qualify the lead than those that waited two hours (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, Harvard Business Review, 2011). Because most people contact several businesses at once, aim for minutes rather than hours.
Yes. 45% of Australian construction businesses say slow replies have cost them work (CommBank and OpenAI small business survey, September 2026). On Word of Mouth, Melbourne landscapers take 122 hours on average to respond to a quote request (wordofmouth.com.au, October 2026), so a fast reply stands out.
No. Customers who have just sent an enquiry are expecting an answer, and a fast reply reads as organised rather than desperate. What reads badly is a fast reply that is obviously generic, which is why the first message should ask something specific about their job.
Then something has to reply for you, because trying harder does not work when you physically cannot reach your phone. That can be an answering service, a staff member, or an automated first reply that captures the job and books the visit.
No, and for landscaping you usually should not. The first reply needs to establish what the work is, whereabouts it is and when they want it done, so you can decide whether it is worth a site visit.
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