does it go trough 3 or just have to reach 3? because this can be done by a queue.
Besides that maybe a promise / queue system could help in general since you can say "we get back to you" but there is instant feedback? But this already is very speculative :) since I would have to analyze it to say anything besides classic approaches "it's slow make it async" it's slow "use a parallel system instead of a serial one" :)