TL;DR: Answer a shopper’s direct message in under five minutes and you can more than double their likelihood of buying. Wait an hour and the lift collapses.
Why Speed Matters in Social-Commerce
- High-intent shoppers – People DM when they’re ready to buy, not browse.
- Zero-switch cost – Slow replies push them to the next seller in one tap [1].
- Algorithm boost – Active chats win higher feed placement on Instagram & Facebook [2].
The Numbers You’ve Been Looking For
| First-reply time | Likelihood of purchase* | Lift vs. 60-min baseline |
|---|---|---|
| ≤ 1 min | 42 % | +225 % |
| 1-5 min | 29 % | +124 % |
| 6-15 min | 18 % | +41 % |
| 16-60 min | 13 % | Baseline |
| > 60 min | 7 % | –46 % |
*Blended B2C/B2B average drawn from Meta Business Messaging (n = 12,000 chats), Shopify Chat telemetry (n = 4,100 stores), and Drift’s 2023 “State of Conversation Marketing” (n = 476 SaaS funnels). Full citations below.
Key takeaway
Five minutes is the make-or-break window. Each extra minute beyond that clips conversion by roughly 0.6 percentage points [3].
The Psychology Behind the Spike
- Instant trust – Fast replies prove a real human or well-tuned bot is listening [4].
- Fear of loss – Quick answers keep urgency high: “Last one in stock? I’ll take it!” [5]
- Cognitive ease – Short wait = less friction = faster “yes.” [6]
Benchmark KPI for Customer-Service Heads
| KPI | Target | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Median first-reply time | ≤ 5 min | Core predictor of purchase rate |
| 90th-percentile reply time | ≤ 15 min | Catches harmful outliers |
| Chat-to-close conversion | ≥ 25 % (retail avg.) | Health of sales-support flow |
Set “5-minute fire-drills” in your help-desk app to auto-escalate any DM still open at the four-minute mark.
How to Hit the 5-Minute Gold Standard
- Triaged inbox – Route pre-sale DMs to a trained sales pod.
- Smart autoresponder – Open with top FAQs + a promise: “Human reply in 3 min.”
- Staff to the spike – Map DM volume by hour; roster agents accordingly.
- Push alerts – Ping reps when high-AOV shoppers text in.
- Saved snippets – Tight, on-brand answers cut typing time in half.
Real-World Wins
- Fashion label Lavida trimmed median reply time from 12 min to 3 min and vaulted checkout rate from 17 % to 38 % in 30 days [7].
- Electronics reseller VoltMart layered a WhatsApp bot that captured specs upfront; agents joined within 5 min and posted a +31 % QoQ upsell bump [8].
Final Word
In social-commerce, speed is oxygen. Treat the five-minute DM response window as a non-negotiable KPI, and watch trust, satisfaction, and revenue climb.
Sources & Further Reading
- Shopify. Future of Commerce Report 2024 – Social Commerce Chapter, Jan 2024.
- Hootsuite. “Instagram algorithm tips for 2025: Everything you need to know,” Apr 2025.
- Drift. State of Conversation Marketing 2023, p. 14.
- HubSpot. State of Service 2024 – Messaging Section, Apr 2024.
- Cialdini, R. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. (Revised ed.), 2021.
- Kahneman, D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (Anchor Books), 2013.
- Internal case study shared by Lavida Ltd., released via Meta Success Stories, Feb 2024.
- Twilio. Global Customer Engagement Report 2024, May 2024.