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Pilot study · first reply time

The reply you already paid for is going cold while you sleep.

You spend $22 to $70 in connects to earn one Upwork reply. Then it sits in your inbox, the client moves on, and the money you spent to earn it is gone. Your proposal was never the problem. Your reply time is. We ran a pilot to put a number on it.

The thing nobody puts a number on

You pay for every Upwork reply before you read it. Connects to send the proposal. Sometimes a boost. Your team's time to write it. Depending on your category, that reply cost you between $22 and $70.

Then it lands in a chat window. If you answer in minutes, the conversation keeps going. If you answer in hours, the client has already moved on. No alert. No line item. You never see it leave.

What we did

We started with 10 long term GigRadar agencies, about 5 to 20 people each, and moved their Upwork replies into the CRM. One inbox. Alerts on every new client message. Mobile, so a reply does not wait for someone to open a laptop. Our success team coached them with the same playbook we use for managed accounts. We tracked one number above all others. First reply time.

First reply time is the gap from the client's message to your reply. It is not whether a bid earns a reply, that is reply rate, driven by your proposal. It is whether the conversation survives once the client writes. That is the number the CRM moves.

How long the client waits for your first reply

Each dot is the average first reply. Further left is faster. The green band marks under 15 minutes, where leads stay warm.

First reply time across the pilot Before the CRM about 4 hours. On the CRM by hand about 44 minutes. With Laziza AI under 5 minutes. Leads stay warm under 15 min 1 min5 min15 min1 hr4 hr ≈ 4 hr Before CRM the client cools off ≈ 44 min On CRM, by hand 82% faster under 5 min With Laziza AI 98% faster

Before the CRM, first replies averaged about 4 hours. After 1.5 months on the CRM, those 10 teams brought the average to about 44 minutes by hand. Half their replies landed inside 16 minutes. Laziza AI, the AI responder, drafts and sends that first reply in your voice the moment a client writes. We tested it with the pilot teams.

What speed buys

Speed is not the prize. Speed buys the next reply, and the next reply buys the contract.

The client writes back more

Conversations where the client replied again.

+14 pts
Client return rate Before CRM 60 percent, on CRM 70 percent, with Laziza AI 74 percent. 020406080 60%70%74% Before CRMOn CRMLaziza AI

A live lead can become a contract. A dead one cannot.

More replies become contracts

Started contracts per 100 client replies.

8 to 10
Started contracts per 100 replies Before CRM 8, on CRM 9, with Laziza AI 10. 0481216 8910 Before CRMOn CRMLaziza AI

Same leads. You stop losing the ones already interested.

What happens next, which is the real story

Before the CRM, when an agency answered a client, the client wrote back about 60 percent of the time. The rest went quiet. After replies dropped to minutes by hand, the client came back about 70 percent of the time. With Laziza AI answering first, about 74 percent in the pilot. More live leads.

So we followed the leads toward contracts. Before the pilot, on the order of 8 of every 100 client replies became a started contract. As more leads stayed alive, that rose to about 10 per 100 in the group that let Laziza AI answer first. Same leads. The agencies just stopped losing the ones that were already interested.

The math on a plate

Take an agency that gets 40 client replies a month, at $49 each. When the first reply is slow, about 1 in 7 of those conversations dies that would have lived. That is roughly $270 a month in replies you paid for and let go cold. And that is only the connects. It does not count the contract on the other side of the dead lead.

What one reply costs you, before you read it

Connects you spend to earn a reply, by category. The dashed line is the platform average.

Cost per reply by category Engineering $22, Writing $30, Web and mobile $70. The platform average is $49. Live GigRadar data, last 90 days. $0$20$40$60 $22$30$70 Engineeringlowest Writing Web and mobilemost expensive Platform average $49

You pay this in connects, plus your team time, before the client says a word. Answer slow and that money goes cold.

The lesson, free, even if you never use us

Reply time is the one lever you fully control. Reply rate is your proposal. Reply time is your inbox. Try this for one week. Put every Upwork message in one place. Turn on alerts so nothing waits for a laptop. Answer the first message inside 15 minutes, even a rough one. A fast rough reply beats a slow perfect one. Then count how often the client writes back. That return rate is your retention, and it is the number to grow.

By hand, that is real work. Our coached teams held about 44 minutes, and it took daily effort. Answering in under 5 minutes on every message, overnight, is not a pace you can hold by hand. That is what Laziza AI, the AI responder, is for.

Be the agency that answers first.

Put Laziza on your accounts and the reply you paid for stops going cold. It answers in your voice, the moment a client writes, day or night. You set it up once. It does not sleep.

Book your free call

About this pilot

This was an early pilot with a small, coached group of agencies, not a platform wide promise. The cost per reply figures are live GigRadar data across the platform. The reply time, return, and contract figures are from the pilot group. We tested Laziza AI, the AI responder, with these teams. Your numbers will depend on your category, your team, and your clients.