Application Response Rates and Response Times

At Vivian, maintaining timely communication with candidates is essential to creating the best experience for nurses and recruiters. To support this, we track application response rates and response times and may temporarily suspend recruiters whose response rates fall below our standard. This article explains how response rates and response times are measured, what can lead to suspension, and how to regain access to applications and proposals.

How is Application Response Rate Measured?

• Calculated as:
  Response rate = (Number of applications replied to) ÷ (Total applications received).
• Includes applications coming from both inbound applications and proposals.
• Measured monthly on a calendar cycle.  
  • For example, January 1 to January 31 or February 1 to February 28. 
  • Important: We cannot generate reports for custom date ranges.

Key points:

• Recruiters must reply to every application.
  
  
  • If a nurse submits two applications but the recruiter only responds to the nurse once, the first application reply counts as a response. The second application is marked as a non-response.

Let’s explore this further:

• 1:00 PM: Rachel RN, applies to ICU RN contract in Denver.
• 1:05 PM: Recruiter replies to Rachel RN. (Response to App #1)
• 1:10 PM: Rachel RN, applies to ICU RN contract in Portland.
• 1:15 PM: Recruiter sends another reply. (Response to App #2) 

The response rate for these two applications is recorded as 100%.

• Suppose a nurse submits multiple applications before the recruiter can respond. In that case, only one reply is needed for all those applications to count as responded.
  • Example:
    • 1:00 PM: Rachel RN applies to ICU RN Contract in Denver.
    • 1:01 PM: Rachel RN applies to ICU RN Contract in Portland.
    • 1:15 PM: Recruiter sends one reply message.
  • One reply at 1:15 PM covers both applications since the recruiter's reply was sent after both apps were submitted.

Ending Chats Without Replies

• If a recruiter ends the chat without sending a reply, it counts as a response.
  
  
• If a nurse ends the chat before the recruiter replies, it does not count as an application and doesn’t affect response rates.

Example:

• 1:00 PM: Nurse sends a message
• 2:00 PM: Nurse submits an application
• 3:00 PM: Nurse sends another message
• 4:00 PM: Nurse ends the chat (no recruiter response)

In this case, this chat does not count toward response rates.

Why Am I Suspended?

If your application response rate falls 10% below your company’s average, you’ll be suspended from receiving new applications or sending proposals.

How to Get Re-enabled:

• Reply to all messages with new applications to improve your response rate.
  
  
• You'll be automatically re-enabled once your response rate meets or exceeds your company’s average.

Note: With recent updates to our response rate metrics, suspensions and re-enabling can happen more quickly.

Response rates update quickly but may take a few minutes on occasion. If you don’t see changes within 25 minutes, contact Technical Support for help.

Application Response Times

Applies only to applications that received a response from the recruiter

• Measures how long it takes a recruiter to respond to an application.
  
  
• Uses the median response time to account for longer delays at night or weekends.

How it's calculated:

• Time is measured from the first nurse message in the application chat block to when the recruiter either:
  
  
  • Sends a reply, or
    
    
  • Ends the chat.

How is an “application chat block” defined for tracking Response Times?

• An “application chat block” is a block of user chat messages containing an application sent to a recruiter.
  
  
• The “application sent" time is the timestamp of the user’s first message in this block (not necessarily when the application was submitted).

A chat block ends in any of the following situations:

• The recruiter replies to the nurse,
  
  
• The recruiter ends the chat without replying
  
  
• The chat is transferred to another recruiter, or
• Either the nurse or the recruiter ends the chat.

Here’s an example:

In this case, there are two application blocks tracked for response times:

• The first response time is one hour, from the 6 AM initial application on May 1st until the recruiter's response one hour later at 7 AM.
• The second response time is 4 days, as the new application block began with Rachel RN’s chat response on May 1st at 7:30 AM and ended with Jenny’s response on May 5th at 7:30 AM. 

Important: Whether the recruiter sends a reply or simply ends the chat, it counts as the recruiter’s response, and the response time block ends at that point.

If the nurse sends a new application after the chat block ends, this starts a new “application block” and restarts the timer for tracking response time.

Understanding Chat Transfers and AI Responses

Chat Transfers:

• If a chat is transferred from recruiter A to recruiter B in the middle of an application chat block, that application chat block will end. This application will not count as a response or factor into response metrics.
• A candidate must send another block of chats containing a new application to affect response metrics.
• For this reason, recruiters are encouraged to reply to nurses before transferring a chat.

AI Agent Messages:

• AI-generated messages are now treated the same as human recruiter messages for calculating response rates and response times. Any AI-generated response will count as valid replies and be fully included in response metrics.