Saturday afternoon at any Renault dealership in Kyiv: the showroom is half-empty, two sales reps wandering, and a single laptop with the WhatsApp business inbox blinking. Behind that blink is 28 messages from the last 90 minutes.
The shape
We pulled three months of inbound across one franchise. The data was uglier than the sales lead admitted.
| 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.