Email Response Time Expectations

A discussion came up in my class yesterday that was very interesting. The professor asked:

   How long do you expect to wait for a response from someone you email?

There were varying responses from one hour to one week. What are you expectations if you email someone you don't know? What if they are a professor? developer? manager? ... etc.

Personally I hold my self to what I call the 48 rule. If I am on my computer when I receive the email I will try to respond to it within 48 minutes, while this is not always the case if the email came in requesting a response I always try to respond within 48 hours. If I don't have the answer within 48 hours, I still try to send a respond telling the recipient that I am working on getting them an answer and will respond as soon as I have obtained it.

--Eric (Grand Valley State University)

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 12, 2005
  I generally expect answers within a few minutes, if I know the recipient is at their computer. Once it took my manager 2 minutes short of a full month to reply to an e-mail of mine. That was more entertaining than it was annoying, though.
• Anonymous
  January 12, 2005
  Would depend on who I e-mailed. If I e-mailed a friend that I know is in school and dealing with finals--a week is cool. If I am having a support issue I would expect a couple of days max. If it's Eric...4 minutes! :)
• Anonymous
  June 16, 2009
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