What is first response time?
First response time is how long a customer waits between sending their first message and getting the first reply. It's usually reported as an average or a median over a period.
Also called: FRT, first reply time, time to first response.
By Santhul Joseph, AI EngineerUpdated
How to calculate it
Add up the wait before the first reply in each conversation, then divide by the number of conversations.
Example: five chats got their first reply after 1, 2, 4, 30 and 3 minutes. That's 40 minutes in total, so the average first response time is 8 minutes. The median, the middle value, is 3 minutes, which is closer to what most of those customers felt.
Why it matters
A quick first reply tells the customer someone is there. A website visitor who waits too long may leave for another tab, and a WhatsApp or Instagram question answered the next day may already have gone to someone else.
It measures speed, not quality. An instant "we'll get back to you" improves the number without helping anyone, so read it next to resolution rate.
First response time in SimplyBoost
The AI agent replies at any hour on your website, WhatsApp and Instagram, and Performance shows Avg response: the average time from a customer's message to the agent's reply.
When the agent hands a conversation to your team, it keeps helping until someone replies, so the customer isn't left waiting in silence.
Questions people ask
What's the difference between first response time and average response time?
First response time only measures the wait for the first reply. Average response time covers every reply in the conversation, and that's the number SimplyBoost's Performance page shows.
Does an automatic "we got your message" count as a first response?
It shouldn't. An automatic acknowledgement doesn't answer anything, so measure the first real reply.
How do I lower first response time without hiring?
Let an AI agent take the first reply on common questions and hand the rest to your team with the conversation attached. Your team then starts from context, not from zero.