Your email response time directly impacts your success. We analyzed millions of professional emails to uncover what’s normal and how to improve.
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What is an acceptable professional email response time?
Context determines acceptable response times. We analyzed thousands of business emails and found clear patterns based on email type:
What do customers expect for email response times?
Customer expectations are higher than ever. Our research reveals:
- 90% of customers want an immediate response
- 60% define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less
- 40% of millennials wait only 60 minutes before trying another channel (Northridge Group study)
- 41% expect responses within 6 hours (Forrester Research)
What about internal email response expectations?
Team communications have different standards. Research shows:
- 52% of professionals expect responses within 12-24 hours
- 20% expect faster responses (under 12 hours)
- Only 3% are okay waiting a week or longer
Best Practice: Never exceed 24 hours for any business email. Strive for 1-2 hour responses when possible.
What is a normal email response time?
What does EmailAnalytics data show about response times?
We publish monthly benchmarks from our analysis of professional email accounts. Our latest research reveals:
Including weekends & holidays:
- Overall response time: 11h 28m 41s
- Work hours only: 3h 57m 06s
Excluding weekends & holidays:
- Overall response time: 10h 57m 13s
- Work hours only: 3h 48m 24s
Response times vary significantly by day of the week, with Mondays showing the slowest responses due to email backlog.
How do other studies compare?
Multiple studies confirm similar patterns:
- Average: 16.83 hours
- Median: 1.78 hours (more representative)
- Analyzed 691,000 business emails
- Average: 12 hours 10 minutes
- Fastest: 1 minute
- Slowest: 8 days
- 62% of companies don’t respond at all (!)
- Office Depot leads: 48 minutes average
- Musician’s Friend: 58 minutes
- Top 100 retailers average: 17 hours
What about sales lead response times?
Drift’s research on form submissions reveals shocking gaps:
- Only 7% respond within 5 minutes
- 55% fail to respond within 5 days
- 30% respond within 1 business day
How do you find your email response time in Gmail, Google Workspace & Outlook?
Manual tracking is virtually impossible with modern email volume. EmailAnalytics solves this by integrating directly with your email account.
What metrics does EmailAnalytics track?
Once you sign up for an account, you’ll see comprehensive email statistics including:
- Average response time (yours and your team’s)
- Response time distribution (% within 5 min, 15 min, 1 hour, etc.)
- Email volume by day/hour
- Category-based metrics
- Comparison to industry averages
How does EmailAnalytics calculate response time accurately?
Our algorithm accounts for real-world factors:
Improve your team's email response time by 42.5% With EmailAnalytics
- 35-50% of sales go to the first-responding vendor.
- Following up within an hour increases your chances of success by 7x.
- The average professional spends 50% of their workday on email.
- Work hours vs. after-hours emails
- Time zones
- Weekends and holidays
- Emails that never receive responses
For emails received outside business hours, we don’t start the response clock until work hours begin, ensuring fair and accurate measurements.
How do you track response time in Yahoo, AOL & other email providers?
Unlike Gmail and Outlook, other providers don’t offer native response time tracking. Options include:
- Export inbox data to spreadsheets for manual calculation
- Third-party tools (though options are limited)
- Custom scripts or development
Note: These methods are often unreliable and time-consuming compared to dedicated analytics tools.
What are 6 proven ways to improve email response time?
1. How often should you check email?
Balance responsiveness with productivity:
- Morning check: Clear overnight emails
- Mid-morning: Handle urgent items
- After lunch: Process new messages
- End of day: Final sweep
Warning: Constant checking hurts productivity more than it helps response time.
2. How do you handle emails that need research?
Quick acknowledgment template: “Thanks for your email. I need to gather some information to give you a complete answer. I’ll respond fully by [specific time].”
3. When should you use away messages?
Include:
- Return date
- Alternative contact for urgent matters
- Expected response time upon return
Don’t forget to set a reminder to remove it! See our out of office message examples for templates.
4. When should you delegate emails?
Delegation triggers:
- Email overload (50+ unread)
- Specialized knowledge required
- Lower priority than current tasks
- Team member better positioned to help
5. How do you set response time expectations?
Example signature: “I check email at 9am, 1pm, and 4pm ET. For urgent matters, please call [number].”
Also share your busiest email days so contacts adjust expectations accordingly.
6. How do you create an email response time policy?
Effective policy components:
- Response time targets by email type
- Escalation procedures
- Coverage responsibilities
- Measurement and reporting methods
Frequently Asked Questions
What is average email response time?
This metric is crucial for sales and customer service teams because it directly impacts customer satisfaction and conversion rates. Faster responses correlate with higher success rates.
What is a typical average email response time?
This varies by industry and role:
- Customer service: 1-6 hours
- Sales: Under 1 hour ideal
- Internal communications: 12-24 hours
- Executive level: 24-48 hours
How do I find my average response time?
EmailAnalytics provides instant calculations plus:
- Individual and team metrics
- Trend analysis over time
- Comparison to benchmarks
- Detailed breakdowns by category
Why does email response time matter so much?
Additional impacts:
- Customer satisfaction scores
- Lead conversion rates
- Team collaboration efficiency
- Overall productivity metrics
How can I improve my team’s response time?
Team improvement strategies:
- Share response time metrics weekly
- Recognize fast responders
- Identify and address bottlenecks
- Implement coverage schedules
- Use email metrics to guide training
What if I can’t respond to all emails quickly?
Prioritization framework:
- Urgent + Important: Respond immediately
- Important only: Respond within 4 hours
- Urgent only: Quick acknowledgment, full response later
- Neither: Batch process during scheduled times
Key Terms
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Jayson is a long-time columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, Inc.com, and various other major media publications, where he has authored over 1,000 articles since 2012, covering technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship. He keynoted the 2013 MarketingProfs University, and won the “Entrepreneur Blogger of the Year” award in 2015 from the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded a marketing agency that appeared on the Inc. 5000 before selling it in January of 2019, and he is now the CEO of EmailAnalytics.
