Email response time · Gmail & Outlook

Know how fast your team answers email, person by person

EmailAnalytics measures email response time for every person and every team on Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook and Microsoft 365. See who's fast, who's falling behind, and whether your team is getting quicker week to week.

It connects through Google's and Microsoft's APIs, so there's nothing to install and nobody changes how they email.

Setup in about two minutes · Gmail and Outlook · Nothing to install

Why it matters

Response time is the email metric customers actually feel

A slow reply loses a lead or turns a simple question into a complaint. But Gmail and Outlook don't report how long anyone takes to reply, so most managers only find out when a customer follows up a second time.

Teams that measure it get faster. HR Covered cut its customer service response time by 70% and raised its CSAT score from 7.9 to 8.6, and Smartsites reduced its average response time by 60.4% within two months.

What you can see

Response time analytics for every inbox on your team

Average response time

For each person, each team or the whole company, over any date range.

First response time

How long it takes to send the first reply in a thread, the number most customer SLAs are written around.

Work hours and actual time

Each person is measured two ways: real elapsed time, and time within their own work hours and time zone.

Volume and workload

Emails sent and received per person, top senders and recipients, and activity by hour and day of the week.

Filters and contact groups

Measure response time to external contacts only, to a key account, or with automated emails filtered out.

Up to two years of history

Past email syncs when you connect, so you start with a baseline instead of waiting weeks for data.

For teams

How response time tracking works for teams

EmailAnalytics is built for managers who need to see a whole team's response times, not just their own. Here's how it fits the way teams are actually organized.

Add the whole team at once

With the Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 integration, an admin adds mailboxes on your domain directly. Nobody else has to sign in.

Group people into teams

Create teams like Sales or Customer Service, then compare each team's average response time side by side on the dashboard.

Managers see their own team

Give a team lead access to only their team's numbers, and decide whether employees can see their own stats. How permissions work.

Reports in everyone's inbox

Daily, weekly or monthly reports go to managers with team stats and to team members with their own. Set up reports.

Fair numbers for everyone

Set work hours and a time zone for each inbox, and log vacation or sick days so time off doesn't count against anyone.

Shared mailboxes count too

Replies sent from an Outlook shared mailbox like support@ are credited to the agent who sent them. Shared mailbox analytics.

How it's calculated

How EmailAnalytics measures response time

Response time is the time between an email arriving and the recipient replying in the same thread. A few rules keep the number honest:

  1. Only replies count. Emails nobody replies to aren't averaged in, so newsletters and FYIs don't drag the number down. To catch emails that should have had a reply, use SLA alerts.
  2. The clock starts at the latest email. If a customer sends two emails in a row, response time is measured from the most recent one.
  3. Follow-ups aren't double counted. If someone replies and then follows up before hearing back, only the first reply counts.
  4. Work hours are respected. If work hours start at 8am, an email that arrives at 7am and gets a reply at 8:05am counts as 5 minutes in the work-hours figure.
  5. Auto-replies aren't responses. Out-of-office replies count as sent emails, but not as responses.

Good to know: replies must be in the same thread, and replies sent more than 14 days after the email arrived aren't counted. Read the full calculation rules

How it compares

Ways to measure team email response time

OptionResponse time for each person and teamChanges how your team works
EmailAnalyticsYes, automatically, with up to two years of historyNo, the team stays in Gmail or Outlook
Gmail or Outlook aloneNoNo
Spreadsheets and spot checksPartly, for the emails someone samples by handYes: manual work every week
Help desk softwareYes, once email moves into ticketsYes: a new tool and workflow

FAQ

Email response time tracking: common questions

How does EmailAnalytics calculate email response time?

Response time is the time between an email arriving and the recipient replying in the same thread. Only emails that get a reply are counted, the clock starts from the most recent email in the thread, follow-ups sent before the other person replies aren't counted again, and replies sent more than 14 days later are ignored. See the full calculation rules.

Can I see response time for each team separately?

Yes. Group people into teams such as Sales or Customer Service and compare team averages on the dashboard. You can also give a team manager access to only their own team's numbers.

What's the difference between actual and work-hours response time?

Actual response time is the real time that passed before a reply. Work-hours response time only counts time inside each person's set work hours, so an email that arrives overnight isn't counted as hours of delay. Read more.

Does time off affect someone's response time?

Not if you log it. Add vacation, holiday or sick days in the Out of office settings and EmailAnalytics treats that time as outside work hours, so the work-hours response time isn't skewed. Employees can also add their own out-of-office days.

Does it work with Gmail and Outlook?

Yes. EmailAnalytics works with Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook and Microsoft 365, including Outlook shared mailboxes like support@.

Do team members need to install anything?

No. EmailAnalytics connects through Google's and Microsoft's APIs. An admin can add mailboxes on your domain directly, and your team keeps emailing as usual.

Does EmailAnalytics read the content of emails?

By default, no. Response time tracking uses email header information only: addresses, timestamps and subject lines.

How much does EmailAnalytics cost?

Current plans and prices are on the pricing page. You can try EmailAnalytics free for 14 days.

See your team's response time today

Connect Gmail or Outlook in about two minutes. Up to two years of email history syncs automatically, so you start with a real baseline.