How quickly should you respond to an email?

More than two thirds of us expect co-workers to respond to emails within four hours or less, according to a recent email response time survey. Perhaps its no wonder that so many workers can't go five minutes without typing away on their smart phone or losing focus on an important task to answer another message in an endless series of email exchanges.

Of course, the results are a bit skewed by Generation Y (born 1977 or later). Members of this generation aparently do their best Veruca Salt impersonation when it comes to receiving email, since 43% of them expect a response within one hour.

People have a little more patience when it comes to receiving a response to emails sent to a business. Companies should always try to respond to customer emails as quickly as possible, but 75% of us are willing to wait at least a day:

The survey also asked how quickly we expect our friends to respond to email. Here, we're a bit more lenient, with 88% of survey participants saying they thought they should receive a reply within 1 or more days.

I conducted the same survey last year (see the 2011 results), so have there been any changes? The short answer is no, not really. The only thing noticeable was members of Generation Y have grown slightly more impatient, since 35% of them expected co-workers to reply to email within one hour in 2011, but that number has risen to 43% in 2012. 

What does all this mean?

Service, whether it's external to your customers or internal to your co-workers, is all about expectations. Should our co-workers be more patient? Certainly, but the reality is right now they're not. Do people misuse email? Yes, but screaming at your computer won't change that.

While we can't change others, we can lead by example. For businesses, I wrote a short post on managing customer service email three years ago that still feels relevant today. The top tip? Track email response times and set a goal of 1 business day for everything. (You can read it here.) For individuals, I wrote a post on 10 ways to avoid email overload. (Read that one here.) Perhaps the most important lesson there is to have the discipline to use email correctly rather getting sucked in to becoming part of the problem. 

Co-workers have high expectations for email response times

Nearly 75% of us expect co-workers to respond to emails within four hours or less, according to a recent survey conducted by Toister Performance Solutions, Inc. Almost 25% of respondents are particularly impatient, saying the expected co-workers to respond to emails within one hour. 

We give businesses a little more time to respond than our co-workers. The majority of survey respondents (63%) indicated they expected business to respond to their emails within one day.

The survey also tried to see if different generations of workers had different expectations for email response times. Expectations across all generations were similar for businesses, but Gen Ys (born 1978 or later) tended to expect faster response times from their co-workers. Nearly 35% of Gen Y respondents said they expected co-workers to respond to their emails within one hour:

The survey also asked how quickly people expected their friends to respond to emails. Here, there was a bit more leeway with more than 90% of the respondents saying 1 day or later.

What are your impressions?
Our expectations for response times clearly have some implications on customer service, both external (emailing businesses) or internal (emailing co-workers). Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

Survey: how quickly should people respond to email?

Chances are pretty good that you send a lot of emails. Please take a moment to complete a short survey to let us know how quickly you expect to receive a response.

Update on Monday, May 30. The survey is now closed, but you can view the results on my blog.

The final tally will be profiled in my email newsletter, the Monthly TPS Report, which is due out next week. The second question is designed to see if there are different expectations among age groups.

If you don't already receive the Monthly TPS Report, you can sign up to receive the newsletter by clicking here.

Managing customer service email

Last week I made a short post about customer service email response times and vowed to do a little (unscientific) research on the subject. Twenty four hours is a standard response time, but there's a little more to it.

Click to read more ...

Email response times

I sent a "fire and forget" email to Dyson's customer service department last week. Fire and forget as in, "I fired off the email" and then "I forgot I sent it". Their response came almost a week later, which got me thinking. What is the appropriate amount of time to respond to a customer service email?

Click to read more ...