I’m one of several managers that report to a director. One of my co-workers complained to me this morning that when her teams sends emails to my team that they’re slow to respond. I asked her for an example and she cited one where her team member sent mine an email at 10:15am. My team member responded at 4:30pm. That’s only about 6 hours which I think is very reasonable.
Another was sent at 2pm on a Friday and my team provided an answer by 10am the following Monday.
I told her that one business day for a response is my expectation, even if it’s just an acknowledgment because the email may require research. I ask my team to let the recipient when they should expect another message.
This didn’t go over well. She told me she implemented a 90 in 90 where she expects her team to answer 90% of email in 90minutes or less. That seems ridiculous to me as these people have jobs to do which require coding, attending meetings, performing testing, and other tasks.
What do you think? Is 24-hours/8business hours reasonable for replies? Or are my expectations too low?