WhatsApp enquiry statistics 2026

When do parents message a tuition or enrichment centre on WhatsApp, and how long do they wait for a first reply? We counted it across more than 30 business locations in Singapore that answer WhatsApp with Conciergr. Most published figures on enquiry timing are estimates or come from sales teams; these come from real parent conversations.

Measured 30 September 2026 · data from 27 August 2026 to 30 September 2026 · by Joshua Wong, founder of Conciergr

Key findings

  • 55% of WhatsApp conversations that parents started with tuition and enrichment businesses began outside weekday office hours (Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm): 2,051 conversations at 35 business locations in Singapore, 27 August to 30 September 2026.
  • 21% of those conversations began between 9pm and 9am, when no one is at the desk.
  • 24% began between 6pm and midnight, and 30% on a Saturday or Sunday.
  • The busiest hour to start a conversation was 9am to 10am, with 9% of all conversations. Mornings are the busiest time, and the evening until 11pm stays about half as busy as the peak.
  • At these businesses, which answer with Conciergr, the median wait for a first reply was 17 seconds, and 9 in 10 conversations had one within 160 seconds.
  • 88% of the conversations that started outside office hours had a first reply within one minute.

Conversations started, by hour of the day

00:00 to 01:00: 16 conversations01:00 to 02:00: 9 conversations02:00 to 03:00: 4 conversations03:00 to 04:00: 3 conversations04:00 to 05:00: 4 conversations05:00 to 06:00: 4 conversations06:00 to 07:00: 25 conversations07:00 to 08:00: 51 conversations08:00 to 09:00: 98 conversations09:00 to 10:00: 178 conversations10:00 to 11:00: 163 conversations11:00 to 12:00: 156 conversations12:00 to 13:00: 151 conversations13:00 to 14:00: 148 conversations14:00 to 15:00: 143 conversations15:00 to 16:00: 148 conversations16:00 to 17:00: 121 conversations17:00 to 18:00: 136 conversations18:00 to 19:00: 98 conversations19:00 to 20:00: 84 conversations20:00 to 21:00: 101 conversations21:00 to 22:00: 91 conversations22:00 to 23:00: 76 conversations23:00 to 00:00: 43 conversationsmidnight6am9amnoon6pm9pm
9am to 6pm other hours. Local time, all days of the week. 2,051 conversations at 35 locations, 27 August 2026 to 30 September 2026.

An owner who answers WhatsApp only while the office is open sees fewer than half of new conversations when they arrive. The rest wait until the morning, and the morning is also the busiest hour for new ones.

What earlier measurements found

Smaller samples from one of these businesses, a tuition centre with several branches, 9 to 22 September 2026. Replies, not enrolments; neither result is a controlled trial.

  • Of 35 quiet enquiries that got one follow-up message about 20 hours after the business's last reply, 18 (51%) wrote back within a day. Of 56 similar enquiries that got no follow-up only because of the hour of that last reply, 4 (7%) did.
  • Of 50 families sent a reminder on the morning before a trial or first visit, 24 (48%) replied within a day.

What other studies found

These come from sales teams rather than class businesses, but they are the most widely cited measures of how fast businesses reply and what slow replies cost.

  • An audit of 2,241 US companies found an average first response to a web enquiry of 42 hours, and 23% never responded (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, Harvard Business Review, March 2011).
  • Of 1,000 B2B software companies sent a demo request, 63.5% never replied; those that did took 29 hours 17 minutes on average (RevenueHero, 2024).
  • Across 939 B2B software companies, leads contacted within five minutes closed at 32%, against 12% for leads first contacted after 24 hours; only 23% of the companies replied within five minutes (Optifai, data from April 2025 to March 2026).

How we measured

Who is counted. Parents and other customers writing to tuition and enrichment businesses in Singapore that use Conciergr, more than 30 business locations in all. Each business is counted from the day it started with us, so the newest ones add fewer weeks. The businesses' own numbers, their staff and their branches are left out.

What is counted. A conversation starts with a customer's first message after 24 hours without a message from them. Reactions, edits, deletions and stickers are not messages. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm, local time. A first reply is the business's first message back within 24 hours, whether it came from the assistant or from a member of staff.

What is not read. The figures come from message times and counts only. No message content was read, and no business or person can be identified from them. We publish a percentage only when it rests on at least 20 cases.

Limits. One country, one kind of business and one season: late August and September covers part of the school year in Singapore. The reply times describe businesses that use an assistant, not businesses in general.

Updates. We refresh these figures each quarter at this address and change the measurement date above when we do. To quote a figure, please link to this page.

More about who we are and what Conciergr does: About Conciergr. For what fast replies are worth to a class business, read speed to lead and out-of-hours enquiries.