Inquiries cool quickly, because a buyer who filled in a form is often contacting several businesses at once. Speed to lead measures how fast the first real reply arrives, and it is a common metric for sales teams, real estate agents and service businesses that rely on inbound inquiries.
Automation can shorten it by acknowledging the inquiry, asking the qualifying questions and routing it to the right person straight away. The trap is optimizing the first reply and nothing else: a fast automated message followed by a slow handoff to a person does not help, so measure the time to a useful human conversation too.