What is response time for DMs?

For each conversation, take the time of your first reply and subtract the time the customer’s message arrived. Then summarise all those waits in two ways:

• Average response time = total waiting time ÷ number of conversations answered.
• Median response time = the middle wait once you sort them from shortest to longest.

With round numbers: you answer five DMs after 4, 6, 10, 20 and 240 minutes. The total is 280 minutes, so the average is 280 ÷ 5 = 56 minutes, while the median is 10 minutes. Four of the five customers heard back within 20 minutes; one message that sat for four hours dragged the average close to an hour.

Report both. The median shows what a typical customer experienced, and the gap between the two shows how much the stragglers cost you.

• First reply or resolution: first response time stops at your first answer, while resolution time runs until the question is settled. A quick “let me check” improves the first and does nothing for the second.
• Clock hours or working hours: a message sent at 11pm and answered at 9am waited 10 hours on the clock but almost none of your working day. Pick one and label it.
• Automatic replies: an instant acknowledgement is technically a reply, so counting it drops the number to seconds without anyone being helped. Track the first useful answer as well.
• Unanswered messages: a conversation you never answer has no response time at all, so skipping hard questions flatters the number. Report response rate, the share of conversations that got a reply, beside it.

Auto-reply and inbox tools send messages through Meta’s API, and there a slow reply isn’t just worse service: past a certain point it can’t be sent.

Each new message from the customer restarts the 24 hours. A holding reply that asks something back, such as “Which size do you need? I’ll check the stockroom,” keeps the conversation open while you find out.

• Automate the repeat questions. If prices, opening hours and delivery areas come up every day, a keyword or FAQ reply answers them in seconds at any hour.
• Check every folder. On a business account, chats from people who don’t follow you start in Requests, and filtered requests sit in another folder; both are easy to miss.
• Look at when the slow replies happen. If they cluster at night or at weekends, an away message that says when you’re back does more than rushing during office hours.
• Share the inbox. When one person holds the only login, every day off becomes a gap, so give the team access through Meta Business Suite or your inbox tool.