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How long does it take to respond to emails?



How long does it take to respond to emails? Age is a factor.

The Information Science Institute at the University of South Carolina Viterbi School of Engineering conducted a study of emails in 2015. Project leader, Kristina Lerman, and her research team examined 16 billion emails exchanged by two million users over several months to find out how long people take to respond to emails.

The study found that 90% of people will respond within a few days, with about 50% responding in less than an hour.

Teenagers respond, on average, in 13 minutes; people aged 20-35 respond, on average, in 16 minutes; people aged 35-50 respond in about 24 minutes; and people over 50 respond in 47 minutes. Females take about four minutes longer than men to respond to emails.

Emails, on average, contain 5 words. More than 50% of responses contain fewer than 43 words. Only 30% of emails exceed 100 words. Email responses on weekends are the shortest. Longer emails are sent in the morning.

Younger people respond to most emails, but with the fewest words. Older people respond to the same number of emails, no matter how many they receive (if they respond to 50 when they receive  50 emails, they will still respond to 50 when they receive 200 emails).

The study focused on patterns of emails responses, and not on explanations of the differences between age and gender.


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