In chat commerce, the clock starts the instant a customer messages. Every minute of silence is a chance for them to bounce to a competitor's thread.
Speed is a system, not a sprint
You can't hire your way to instant replies across every timezone and spike. An always-on agent answers in seconds by default, and humans step in only where they add value.
- Auto-acknowledge and start qualifying immediately.
- Route only genuinely complex cases to people.
- Measure response time by channel and hour, not as one average.
Teams that close the latency gap usually see conversion move before they touch ad spend.