I was wondering what people’s experiences are like in receiving long-delayed responses to emails, especially in a business context.
I’m talking about delays that are probably three days or more, and the person sending the email has almost certainly checked their email at least a few times in the interim–and you clearly are not top priority.
Do you get this type of email often? Ever? How often do you send an email many days or weeks later, and in what context?
3 days is not a long delay. Just as with snail mail, a reminder after 2 weeks or so is appropriate.
I don’t consider a few days to be a long delay, especially in a personal setting. Sometimes I will e-mail someone and then call them if I need a quicker answer. I don’t assume everyone checks their e-mail as often as I do. If I know they have read it, I just assume they didn’t have time to answer or didn’t know the answer, or had to check with someone else or whatever. Or just forgot.
Business, I guess it depends on the context. If I have something I need an urgent answer to, I tend to talk to the person. I use e-mail more as a way of asking about something that they can get to as they have time, so a few days does not bother me at all.
I guess my reaction depends a lot on the person, the specific situation, the topic at hand, etc.
If an e-mail doesn’t require an immediate response but does need some thought before responding and I have to deal with an important client or the government, that e-mail automatically becomes second or third priority, not first.
There are a few other factors I contend with before responding to e-mail, too, that lots of people have to think about first: schedule (I have a minimum of 3 hours of meetings a day usually), the complexity of the issue the e-mail is bringing to my attention and who it’s coming from. I do whatever I can to respond quickly to my peers and to our admin, but if our VP e-mails something to me at the same time, it’ll get faster attention than someone else’s.
I think for business e-mail giving it about a week unless it’s very urgent is appropriate. If it’s so urgent an answer is required immediately, I’d e-mail then leave a voicemail as a follow up.
As for personal e-mail, I don’t check it more than 2-3 times a week, so going more than 3 days before sending a response is not at all uncommon for me.
Thanks for the contributions so far! Anyone else?
Three days is long when you are in a line of work where there’s a lot due and the deadlines are daily. I work in such an environment, and I will always respond to emails where a response is appropriate, regardless of how long ago the original email was sent.
This doesn’t often come up, though, as I usually take care of email business right away, and will apologize for a delay in responding if the email was sent more than six hours ago. I typically cannot sit on something for more than a day. I can’t imagine not replying for weeks unless I was on vacation for that long.
Most people understand that everyone prioritizes and their needs won’t always be your number one concern. It’s only when something is urgent and marked accordingly that people get irked if you don’t reply right away.
If you’re emailing a business, it is common for the emails to be answered by call center agents. If the call center is busy, the emails drop to last priority. Even if the company has a dedicated email team, they turn into emergency call center reps when the call center gets busy.