Got it, thanks. — The message arrived. Nothing more is needed yet.
Received. Will review and get back to you. — The answer will come later, and the sender knows it is coming.
Let me look into this and circle back. — The question is accepted, and the follow-up is promised.
Thanks for your patience. — Said when an answer took longer than expected.
Just bumping this to the top of your inbox. — A polite reminder that no answer has come.
In 2004 Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo published He’s Just Not That Into You, a dating guide that became a film in 2009. The title came from a line in Sex and the City. One chapter is titled “He’s just not that into you if he’s not calling you.”
Behrendt wrote: “Calling when you say you’re going to is the very first brick in the house you are building of love and trust.”
In May 2018 Google added “nudges” to Gmail. The software reminds users of emails they have not answered and of sent emails that got no reply.
The reminder appears in orange next to the message: “Received 3 days ago. Reply?” or “Sent 5 days ago. Follow up?” The feature is on by default.
To become a Superhost on Airbnb, a host must “Respond to 90% of new messages, and accept or decline new reservation requests, within 24 hours.” Superhosts also need an overall rating of 4.8 or higher and a cancellation rate of less than 1 percent.
The badge appears on the listing, where guests who have never met the host can see it.
In early 2010 HCA hospitals in Las Vegas put up billboards showing the average wait in each hospital’s emergency room. The numbers were updated every 30 minutes.
In April 2011 Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey did the same with two electronic billboards. One stood on the New Jersey Turnpike near the Holland Tunnel. The hospital said patients waited, on average, less than 30 minutes.
In 2020 the National Emergency Number Association published a standard for American 911 centers. It calls for “90% of all 9-1-1 calls be answered within 15 seconds and 95% answered within 20 seconds.”
The standard measures how fast someone picks up the phone. It does not measure how fast help arrives.
When an American consumer files a complaint about a bank or lender with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the company is expected to respond within 15 calendar days. It then has up to 60 days for a final response.
The complaint goes into a public database when the company responds, or “after 15 calendar days, whichever comes first.”
When a homeowner tells a mortgage servicer that it has made an error, federal rules set two clocks. Within five business days, the servicer must send “a written response acknowledging receipt of the notice of error.”
The full answer can take longer. For most errors the servicer has 30 business days, and it may extend that by 15 business days only if it tells the borrower in writing, with reasons, before the 30 days run out.
Jeff Bezos kept a public email address for Amazon customers. “I still have an email address that customers can write to,” he said in 2018. When a complaint caught his attention, he forwarded it to one of his executives with one character added: a question mark.
Bezos explained: “That question mark is just a shorthand for, ‘Can you look into this? Why is this happening? What’s going on?'” A former manager described the effect: “By the morning, I better have a damn good resolution to whatever this is.”
On February 2, 2005, Amazon introduced Amazon Prime. “For a flat membership fee of $79 per year, members get unlimited, express two-day shipping for free.” Jeff Bezos said that “two-day shipping becomes an everyday experience rather than an occasional indulgence.”
In April 2019 Amazon announced that one-day shipping would become the standard for Prime members. It expected to spend $800 million in one quarter on warehouses and delivery.