First reply time (FRT) is the elapsed time between when a customer submits a request and when they receive the first meaningful response from your team, excluding auto-acknowledgments.

FRT is the defining metric for async channels—email, chat, social, in-app messaging. Unlike phone where ASA measures queue wait, FRT captures the actual customer experience of "I asked a question, how long until someone engaged with it?" The key word is meaningful: automated "we received your message" replies don't count. Customers want evidence a human is working on their problem.

For B2B fintech and enterprise insurance support, FRT expectations vary wildly by channel and severity. A 4-hour email FRT might be fine for billing questions but catastrophic for production outages. Smart teams segment FRT targets by priority tier and channel rather than chasing a single number. Watch the distribution, not just the average—a mean FRT of 2 hours hides the 10% of tickets sitting untouched for 24 hours.

Related terms: Average speed of answer, Average wait time, Ticket backlog