How quickly should you respond to email?

One day is too long to respond to email.

A 24 hour response time was acceptable way back in the good old days of dial-up internet. That seems quaint in today's age of "always on" communication.

A new survey reveals nearly a third of customers expect businesses to respond to emails in one hour or less.

Separate research from customer relationship management software provider, SuperOffice, reveals the typical company takes 12 hours to respond to emails, potentially disappointing large groups of customers. 

In one test, a whopping 62 percent of companies failed to respond to emails at all.

Keep reading to see the results of this latest survey, and get resources for improving your response time.

Study Overview

In March 2020, I surveyed more than 3,200 people to learn how quickly they expect businesses to respond to an email. 

The study looked at different expectations by age. One surprising result was older customers demand the quickest responses. (More on that in a moment.) 

Consumers from three countries were the primary participants:

• United States

• United Kingdom

• Canada

There were some noticeable differences between consumers from each country.

Finally, a smaller group of 275 people responded to a second question asking how quickly they expected coworkers to respond to an email. 

The study was generously sponsored by SuperOffice.

How fast should you respond to customer emails?

The recommended standard is one hour.

Responding in an hour will meet the expectations of 88 percent of consumers surveyed. While some customers are still okay with a 24 hour response time, many want to hear from you much faster.

There is some good news.

A small group of customers expect a response to their email within 15 minutes. That group is shrinking. Studies conducted in 2015 and 2018 focused on customers in the United States, so here's a comparison for American consumers for those three years:

Response time expectations vary by location

This was the first year the study included customers outside the United States. Customers in the United Kingdom and Canada want even faster service than their American counterparts.

An amazing 38.3 percent of Canadian consumers expect a response in one hour or less.

There are also regional differences within the United States. Here's how quickly consumers in each region expect companies to respond:

All of these results still suggest companies respond within one hour. However, companies might work on responding even faster if they primarily serve customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, or the Northeast region of the United States.

Response time expectations by age

Expectations even differ by age group. It might surprise you to learn that people aged 55-64 are the most demanding for fast responses:

Why do response times matter?

Slow responses can cost your company money, and eventually cost you customers.

Taking longer to respond runs the risk of alienating those customers and possibly prompting them to contact your company a second time, which increases contact volume.

A separate study discovered that waiting for a response was the number one reason customers complained on Twitter.

How fast should you respond to coworker emails?

The data here is a little scary, with 41.3 percent of respondents expecting a response in one hour or less.

The sample size for this group of 275 was too small to get useful results by region or age. However, the trends generally indicate that older workers expect faster responses.

There are two giant caveats to this data.

1. This question focuses on emailing an individual coworker, versus emailing a business that's presumably staffed by a team of people who can respond. 

2. Expecting individual coworkers to respond in one hour is inherently unreasonable and unproductive.

Here's why:

• Constantly checking email is distracting.

• Responding too quickly creates half-baked responses that generate more email.

• Many meetings last an hour. Do you really expect people to check email during meetings?

Additional Resources

One of the reasons I partnered with SuperOffice on this survey is they have spent a lot of time focusing on email responsiveness. For example, the company’s customer success team was able to reduce its average reply time from 5 hours down to 1 hour using a few simple steps.

Would you like to know how they did it?

Check out this webinar with me and Eirik Simonsen from SuperOffice to learn their secrets. We’ll show you how you can respond faster, too. You'll discover:

• One thing that matters even more than speed.

• How to improve your email workflow.

• Counterintuitive ways your employees can respond faster.

How Fast Should a Business Respond to an Email?

April 7, 2020 Update: A newer version of this study is now available.

Email is a critical customer service channel.

A 2017 study from inContact revealed that just 43 percent of customers were highly satisfied with their most recent email customer service interaction. Those who were happy cited speed as a top delighter.

The average company takes 12 hours and 10 minutes to respond to an email, according to a 2018 study from SuperOffice. That's certainly better than the old one business day standard, but is it fast enough?

In April 2018, I surveyed more than 1,200 consumers to learn exactly how fast they expect businesses to respond to emails. The survey also examined response time expectations for Twitter and Facebook messages.

You can read the analysis below or browse the data yourself.

Study Overview

This is the first time I've done this study since 2015, when those results revealed the new email response time standard was just one hour.

The 2018 study surveyed more than 1,200 consumers to see if this has changed.

Participants were asked how quickly they expected a response when contacting a business via email. Response time expectations for Twitter and Facebook messages were also assessed.

Finally, the study examined whether response time expectations varied by age group. For instance, do Millennials expect a faster response than Baby Boomers?

The age groups were defined using definitions from the Pew Research Center. One note, too few members of Generation Z (ages 21 and under) and the Silent Generation (ages 73 and over) participated to include their perspective in the age group portion of the study.

Email Response Time Expectations

Businesses should target a response time standard of one hour, with 15 minutes representing world-class service..

This conclusion comes from looking at the response time that will meet the expectations of at least 80 percent of customers. 

This can be a little confusing at first because the top choice was one day, with 43 percent selecting it. But one day only meets the expectations of those who selected one day or 2+ days, which is a total of 56 percent. You pick up 14 percent of customers if you can respond to email within four hours, though that's still just 70 percent of the total.

A one hour email response time will meet the expectations of 89 percent of your customers. Companies aiming for world-class customer service should respond within 15 minutes or less.

The study looked at response time expectations by age. The responses were fairly close together, but there was a mild surprise. Baby Boomers want the fastest response.

A smaller group of 206 respondents was asked an additional question: How quickly do you expect a response when emailing a coworker?

Response time expectations for this group are very high and arguably unreasonable, with 41 percent of people expecting coworkers to respond to email within one hour. 

The pressure to respond quickly causes many people skim and scan emails from colleagues. They then send partial responses which generates a lot of unnecessary back and forth. One study found that the average email conversation at work includes 4.5 messages.

Which generation has the highest expectations for coworkers? Generation X leads the pack on this one.

Twitter Direct Message Response Expectations

Businesses should target a response time standard of 15 minutes.

Anything slower that 15 minutes risks disappointing a large portion of customers. This can present a challenge for businesses as Twitter is not as popular as more traditional service channels such as email, phone, or even chat. There may not be enough volume to justify staffing for a 15 minute response time. 

Once again, Baby Boomers have the highest response time expectations:

One note from the study is only 40 percent of participants message businesses via Twitter. That percentage is only slightly lower for Baby Boomers, with 35 percent saying they use Twitter for customer service.

Facebook Message Response Time Expectations

Businesses should target a response time standard of 1 hour, with 15 minutes representing world-class service.

A one hour response time may be adequate for most customers, but 17 percent still want to hear back more quickly. For Facebook, it's Millennials who want the fastest response.

Only 50 percent of participants message businesses via Facebook. Millennial Facebook usage is slightly higher than the group average, with 55 percent saying they have contacted a business via a Facebook message.

Get More Insights

I hosted a webinar where I shared some more granular data from the study along with several tactics for meeting customer demands for fast responses. You can watch the webinar replay.

Improving Email Response Time: Interview with Leslie O'Flahavan

The results of the 2015 Toister Performance Solutions email response time survey were released last week.

Customer service writing expert Leslie O’Flahavan joined me for a Google Hangout interview to discuss the results and offer some tips to help companies respond faster and better.

You may want to review the survey results before watching the interview.

Here’s the video plus some additional links and discussion below. 

Discussion & Links

The survey suggested a new response time standard for businesses: one hour.

A 2014 survey revealed the average business currently responds within one business day. Many businesses will risk disappointing their customers by prioritizing cost savings over responsiveness.

O’Flahavan raised the point that organizations trying to meet the new standard may end up compromising quality for speed. (You can see an example of that here.)

She gave us this great quote in the interview:

You have to figure out where does quick overlap with good.

O’Flahavan offered several suggestions for businesses to improve both speed and quality. One was a warm confirmation email that can be used to respond to more complicated problems and inquiries.

This is a message from a real person that essentially says, “We’ve received your email, we’re working on it, and here’s when you can expect a response.”

This tactic does a few things:

• It lets the customer know their message has been received
• It creates a stronger connection than a automated response
• It buys the company some time to respond properly

You can also use this email to direct customers to other channels such as phone or a website that may be faster or more appropriate. 

Companies often face a challenge of coordinating email with other service channels. It wasn’t referenced in the interview, but O’Flahavan provides an excellent example in this recent blog post on her Writing Matters blog. 

Finally, we discussed co-workers. 

The email response time survey revealed that people also expected co-workers to respond within one hour.

O’Flahavan laid out a number of ways this unreasonable expectation might cause some workplace problems. For example, people are less present in meetings because they’re trying to respond to email on the sly.

Wasted time is another potential problem. I recently discovered several surprising email stats including this one: the average person wastes 24 percent of their day on useless email.

Do you have a question for Leslie? She’s very responsive to email.

You can also reach her here:

• Website: www.ewriteonline.com
• Twitter: @LeslieO
• Phone: 301-989-9583

Employees Waste 24 Percent of Their Day on Useless Email

No, the title of this post is not an exaggeration.

Email is a huge time suck. Many of us feel stuck on a perpetual hamster wheel of back and forth communication.

Here’s how I calculated that scary number:

A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker spends 28 percent of their day responding to email. 

A 2012 study from Mimecast found that 86 percent of the emails we receive are useless.

So, 86 percent of 28 percent = 24 percent of our day wasted. Ouch.

What’s causing this problem? There seem to be a few culprits.

One challenge is time pressure.

My latest research on email response time expectations revealed a new one hour standard for replying to email sent by customers and co-workers.

Those expectations pressure us into responding quickly without putting much thought into what we’re writing. 

A 2014 analysis by Front revealed that people average 4.5 emails per conversation. All that back and forth is pretty inefficient.

People expect fast responses, but actual response times are much longer:

• Most businesses still adhere to a one business day standard (source: TPS).
• The average response time for individuals is 27 hours (source: Front).

That triggers a lot of “Did you get my email?” calls, texts, IMs, and emails. More clutter.

Here are a few more examples of email time sucks:

• 19 percent of email is spam (source: Radicati)
• Reply all abusers
• Updates on the status of cake in the conference room
• Checking email constantly
• Email alerts that remind you to check email constantly

So, what can we do about it?

Check out my Google Hangout with customer service writing expert Leslie O'Flahavan. Most of the interview focuses on how businesses can do a better job of responding to customers, but she has some terrific advice for co-workers towards the end of the 30 minute interview.

Get Ready to Respond to Customer Email Within One Hour

Update: This study was repeated in March 2020. You can read the latest results here.

There’s a new standard for email response time.

You can toss out the old school one business day standard. That's so 1999. Even 2014’s four hour response time standard is old news.

The Toister Performance Solutions 2015 email response time survey revealed that customers now expect businesses to respond to their emails in just one hour.

Over 1,000 adults in the U.S. ages 18+ participated in the survey.

Here’s the breakdown of the survey results along with an invitation to tune in to an exclusive interview with customer service writing expert Leslie O'Flahavan.

A Big Challenge for Business

This isn't good news for most companies.

A separate 2014 Toister Performance Solutions survey revealed that 66 percent of companies currently take 1 day or more to respond. (Take the survey yourself and see how you stack up.)

One business day is still favored by many customers, with 43.4 percent of survey respondents selecting this option. The problem with this standard is 43.9 percent of customers expect a faster response.

That means the one business day standard could be alienating nearly half of your customers.

The new one hour standard reflects the longest response time that will meet at least 80 percent of customers’ expectations.

The survey looked at response time expectations by age, but found no significant difference between generations. It seems we all want it now.

More bad news?

In 2014, just 4 percent of survey respondents said they expected businesses to respond within 15 minutes. That jumped up to 14.5 percent this year.

You can see where this is going.

High Expectations for Co-Workers

The survey also revealed that people expect their co-workers to respond quickly too.

The most popular selection on the survey was four hours, but nearly as many people responded “one hour” as did “one day.”

Using the 80 percent rule, the new expectation for co-worker response time is just one hour too.

This is really bad news for workplaces already beleaguered by email overload. 

Learn How to Respond Faster

Check out my Google Hangout On Air interview with customer service writing expert Leslie O’Flahavan. 

Leslie and I discussed ways that companies and customers service agents can respond faster without compromising quality.

Image courtesy of Leslie O'Flahavan

Leslie O’Flahavan is principle of E-WRITE, a company that helps customer care organizations write well in any channel: email, chat, social media, and SMS.

You can connect with Leslie on Twitter, the E-WRITE website, and of course via email.

You can also watch a video of the interview here.

Extra: Some Good News

The survey did reveal some good news.

We still give our friends a bit of leeway when it comes to response times. The standard is unchanged from 2014. It’s still one business day.