Saturday, lunchtime — a typical car showroom: half-empty floor, two managers wandering, a laptop with the WhatsApp business inbox blinking. Behind that blinking: 28 messages in the last 90 minutes.
The shape
We pulled three months of inquiries from one dealer (data anonymized). The picture was worse than the head of sales would admit.
| Hour band | % of inbound | % reps online | Median reply |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat 10:00–13:00 | 22% | 85% | 3 m |
| Sat 13:00–17:00 | 31% | 25% | 2 h 14 m |
| Sat 17:00–21:00 | 28% | 5% | 14 h |
| Sun 10:00–21:00 | 19% | 0% | 19 h |
Why it matters
78% of weekend inbound landed when the staff was off. By the time someone replied at Monday 09:00 the customer had already DM’d two competitors. Median time-to-buy on weekend leads dropped 41% versus weekday leads.
What we built
A Lead Qualifier agent on WhatsApp + Instagram. 30-second reply, four qualifying questions, car availability check against the inventory CSV, scheduled test drive — all in the weekend window. Dealer reviewed every booked slot Monday morning.
What we’d do differently
The voice agent should have shipped first, not third. Even with WhatsApp running, 32% of weekend leads were still phone calls.
Spreadsheet of the full hour-band data on request: andrew@grow2.ai.