Reducing the response time to quote requests starts with measuring how long passes between a request arriving and the proposal being sent, and finding out where the request sits waiting. Then the repetitive steps are automated, such as reading the request, identifying the items, checking stock and calculating the price. The team keeps the validation and the relationship with the customer, and the response goes from hours or days to minutes.
In most organisations, quote requests arrive by email, often as free text or in an attached PDF, using the customer's own descriptions. Someone has to read them, find the items in the catalogue, confirm prices and availability and put the proposal together. Meanwhile, the customer keeps asking other suppliers for prices. This article explains why response time matters for sales, how to measure it, where time is lost and which steps can be automated without taking control away from the team.
Why does quote response time matter for sales?
A quote request is a customer with the intention to buy. The longer it goes unanswered, the more likely the customer is to decide in favour of whoever replied first, especially when the product is comparable across suppliers.
The delay also has an internal cost. Preparing a quote by hand takes up the time of people who should be selling. On our commercial solutions page, preparing each quote manually is shown as taking 30 to 60 minutes, and administrative tasks as taking 40 to 60% of a salesperson's day. Multiplied by a week's worth of requests, that is a large share of the team's capacity.
How do you measure response time to quote requests?
The response time to a quote request is the time between the request arriving and the proposal being sent to the customer. To measure it properly, a sample of 20 to 30 recent requests and four timestamps per request are enough.
- Arrival. When the request reached the mailbox or the contact channel.
- Start. When someone began working on the request.
- Proposal ready. When the quote was prepared and approved.
- Sent. When the proposal went to the customer.
From these timestamps, three simple indicators follow. The median response time, the percentage of requests answered on the same day and the waiting time before anyone picks the request up. The last one is usually the largest, and it is the one automation reduces the most.
Where is time lost between the request and the proposal?
Time is rarely lost in a single place. It is lost in small waits and in repeated work along the process.
- Shared mailboxes. Requests get mixed up with other emails and wait for whoever has time.
- Free-form requests. The customer uses their own descriptions, without the organisation's references.
- Catalogue matching. Each line has to be found in the catalogue, one at a time.
- Prices and stock. The price list and availability are checked in the ERP, often on another screen.
- Missing data. A quantity or an address is missing, and the request stalls until someone asks.
- Approvals. Discounts and special terms wait for a person to decide.
Which quoting steps can be automated?
With EngiAIFlow artificial intelligence agents, almost every repetitive step can be automated. Our commercial process automation page describes them as follows.
- Centralising requests received across several mailboxes, with automatic triage.
- Interpreting free-text content, including the customer's own descriptions and attached PDF documents.
- Matching each line to the catalogue, with a confidence level per line.
- Validating the customer and checking stock.
- Calculating the price according to the organisation's pricing rules, by customer type or by scoring criteria.
- Generating the quote as a PDF and recording it automatically in the ERP.
- Sending the customer an access link, where they view the document, confirm the address, adjust quantities and accept.
- Automatically asking the customer for missing data, when that is what is holding up the quote.
The level of automation is configurable. Each organisation decides what goes ahead on its own and what goes through the team, and can adjust that decision over time.
What always stays with the team?
Automating quotes does not mean removing people from the process. It means taking them out of repetitive work and leaving them where they add value. In EngiAIFlow, the rule is the one on the product page. The AI proposes, the platform decides what is carried out.
- Exceptions. Lines with low confidence in the catalogue match are validated by a person.
- Special terms. Discounts and prices outside the pricing rules are decided by the team.
- The customer relationship. Negotiating, clarifying and closing remain sales work.
- Continuous improvement. The team's corrections teach the agent to recognise each customer's patterns.
A practical example
Imagine a distributor that receives 40 quote requests a week in a shared mailbox. Today, each request waits a few hours on average before anyone picks it up, and preparation takes close to an hour. Many customers only receive the proposal the next day.
With an agent handling the reading, the catalogue matching, the stock and the price, the quote is ready within minutes of the request arriving. The team receives the cases that need a decision and approves them. The rest go to the customer with a link to view and accept. The median response time is now measured in minutes, and the team gains hours every week to sell.
To see this applied to a real process, our case study on quotes and orders by email follows a request from the inbox to the ERP.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good response time for a quote request?
It depends on the sector and on how complex the request is. A simple request by email should be answered on the same day. The most useful step is to measure the current time and set one target for simple requests and another for those that need validation.
Do you need to change ERP to automate quotes?
In most cases, no. The automation checks prices and stock in the ERP the organisation already uses and records the generated quote there.
Can the customer accept the quote online?
Yes. The customer receives an access link, where they view the document, confirm the address, adjust quantities and accept.
What happens when information is missing from the request?
The agent automatically asks the customer for the missing data, when that is what is holding up the quote, instead of the request waiting for someone.
Does artificial intelligence set the prices on its own?
No. The price is calculated according to the organisation's pricing rules. The AI interprets the request and proposes, and the team decides discounts and prices outside the rules.