5 Best Gmail Response Time Tracking Tools

Do you know how long it takes you to respond to emails? If not, you’re not alone. Many people don’t track their email response time, but it’s an important metric to measure. 

After all, your email response time can greatly impact your customer satisfaction, sales, and team productivity. 

Whether it’s a customer inquiry or a vendor question, the clock starts ticking the moment that email hits your inbox. Quick responses not only meet customer expectations but also set the tone for the relationship going forward. 

So, let’s explore why response times matter and how you can track them to improve team efficiency.

Table of Contents

• What is Gmail Response Time Tracking?
• 5 Benefits of Using a Gmail Response Time Tracking Tool 
• Top 5 Recommended Gmail Response Time Tracking Tools
• How to choose a Gmail response time tracking tool?

What is Gmail Response Time Tracking?

As the name suggests, Gmail response time tracking is the process of monitoring the time it takes you or your team to respond to incoming messages. You can do this manually by tracking the time difference between the receipt of the email and your response to it. 

But a much more efficient way to approach this would be automating the process by using a Gmail response time tracking tool. It doesn’t make sense to deploy crucial man hours for this. 

As an added benefit, the tool will also provide you with detailed insights about your response time. Here’s how this can help different teams in your organization – 

• Your support team can track response times to make sure they’re responding to customer inquiries and complaints promptly. This’ll significantly improve customer satisfaction. 

• Similarly, your sales team can use the response time tracking tool to prioritize any leads they may have and make sure they’re following up with them and responding to them quickly. It could be the difference between closing a customer vs losing one to a competitor. 

• You can even use this internally within your company to get better visibility into your team’s performance. Management teams can use this to figure out how prompt their teams are and how available they are. This information can be used to identify areas for improvement and make changes to team workflows.

Overall, Gmail response time tracking is a pretty valuable tool that can help you improve your efficiency and effectiveness across functions. 

5 Benefits of Using a Gmail Response Time Tracking Tool

Here are some of the benefits of using a Gmail response time tracking tool in more detail:

1. Automatic tracking: Gmail response time tracking tools automatically track the time it takes you to respond to each email. This saves you time and effort and ensures that you have accurate data on your email response times.

2. Detailed reports: Gmail response time tracking tools can generate a variety of reports, such as:

• Average response time: This metric shows you how long it takes you to respond to emails on average.
  
• Response time by sender: This metric shows you how long it takes you to respond to emails from different senders. This information can be helpful for identifying important clients or customers who need to be prioritized.
  
• Response time by day of the week: This metric shows you how long it takes you to respond to emails on different days of the week. This information can be helpful for identifying trends in your email workflow.
  
• Response time by time of day: This metric shows you how long it takes you to respond to emails at different times of the day. This information can be helpful for identifying time slots when you’re most productive or when you need to take breaks.
  
• Emails that have not been responded to: This report shows you a list of all of the emails that you have not yet responded to. This can help you to stay on top of your inbox and avoid forgetting to respond to important emails.

3. Team tracking: Gmail response time tracking tools can also track the email response times of your team members. This can be helpful for managers who want to ensure that their team is responding to emails in a timely manner. You can use this information to identify team members who need additional support or to identify areas where your team’s email workflow can be improved.

4. Benchmarks: Some Gmail response time tracking tools also provide benchmarks for different industries and job titles. This can help you compare your email response times to those of your peers and identify areas where you can improve.

5. Identify areas for improvement: Tracking your email response time can help you to identify areas where you need to improve. For example, if you notice that you are taking longer to respond to emails on certain days of the week, you can try to set aside more time for email on those days. Or, if you notice that you are taking longer to respond to emails from certain senders, you can prioritize those emails or delegate them to someone else.

When you know that you are tracking your email response time, it is more likely that you will make a conscious effort to respond to emails promptly. This is because you will know that your performance is being measured, and you will want to make sure that you are meeting your own expectations.

Overall, Gmail response time tracking tools can be a valuable asset for businesses of all sizes. They can help you to improve customer satisfaction, sales, and team productivity.

Top 5 Recommended Gmail Response Time Tracking Tools

Navigating the array of Gmail response time tracking tools can be a tad overwhelming, hence picking the one that aligns with your needs is crucial.

In this section, we’ll recommend a few of the best Gmail response time tracking tools on the market. 

1. Hiver

Hiver is a customer service platform that lets you offer email, chat, voice, and WhatsApp messaging support to your customers – right from your Gmail inbox.

Yes, you heard it right—you don’t need separate, complicated software to interact with customers. Once you install Hiver, the first thing you’ll notice is how you can manage all support channels and your other work emails from the same place (Gmail). Your teams will love it because it’s (literally!) so easy to set up and use yet offers powerful functionalities.

One prominent feature is time tracking, which lets you track and measure how long it takes to respond to and resolve customer queries. You can also create SLAs (Service Level Agreements) to hold your team accountable for meeting set response time standards. Here’s how Hiver helps with time tracking on Gmail

?Set business hours

You can set your business hours in Hiver, which does two important things: it tells customers when your team is available and ensures that time tracking (like response time and resolution time) only counts during working hours. 

This way, your performance metrics reflect how your team operates during actual support windows—not when they’re off the clock.

?Create SLAs for meeting response time standards

Hiver lets you create SLAs (Service Level Agreements) for key metrics like first response time and average resolution time, so both your team and your customers know what to expect.

For example, you might set an SLA that all customer queries should be acknowledged within 1 hour, and resolved within 24 hours for low-priority issues—or faster for high-priority ones. These guidelines help set clear expectations and keep things running smoothly.

?Can you view team performance against the set SLAs?

Absolutely. Hiver lets you set up SLA reports to track detailed compliance and violation records for every email conversation. These insights help you:

• Make smarter, data-driven decisions to improve your support operations
• Measure how well your team is meeting SLA standards
• Spot recurring patterns in delays
• Identify bottlenecks or training needs

✉️ Email response time analytics

Email response time tells you how quickly you send out the initial response to a customer query. 

With Hiver’s detailed reports on email response time, you can easily track how fast your team is responding to customers. This is helpful for businesses or individuals who want to ensure they’re providing quick, efficient support. 

For example, if you notice that replies are taking longer during certain hours, you can identify bottlenecks in your workflow and make adjustments, like redistributing the workload during peak times.

Setting up reports on Hiver is quick, especially compared to other tools that might require more time to configure. 

?️ Advanced analytics and reports

Apart from these granular metrics, Hiver also offers the following reports to help you track response time in Gmail.

• Conversation Reports: These reports help you understand the effectiveness of your team’s customer interactions. They provide metrics on the number of conversations and the response and resolution time for these conversations.
  
• User Reports: These focus on individual agent performance, providing data on average response and resolution times and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) ratings. This granular data can help you identify top-performing agents and those who may need additional training or support.

• Tag Reports: These reports allow you to categorize and track email conversations based on tags like ‘high priority’ or ‘urgent’. Use Tag Reports to spot trends or recurring issues in customer conversations. This enables you to address them proactively before they escalate.

• Number of Customer Requests Received: This shows daily customer request volumes, which helps with staffing and task assignments.

• Requests Closed Per Agent: Measures individual agent efficiency and helps distribute workload.

• First Contact Resolution: Focuses on resolving customer issues in the first interaction. 

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Measures overall customer satisfaction post-interaction on a scale of 1-5.

These additional reports by Hiver offer a more comprehensive view of your customer service operations. Team managers can also build custom reports to track specific metrics that they want to stay on top of.

Pricing:

Hiver offers a free plan that adds powerful help desk functionalities to your inbox. Paid plans start at $19/user/month, billed annually.

2. EmailMeter

EmailMeter presents itself as an adept tool for businesses aiming to track email response times on Gmail. Here’s a breakdown of its features and pricing with respect to email time tracking:

Features:

Response Time Tracking:

• Response Time Trends: EmailMeter allows tracking of email response times on a week-by-week basis, which can be instrumental in observing whether there’s an improvement or deterioration over time​.
  
• Custom Metrics: Create and save metrics with specific filters and conditions, a feature that can be leveraged to monitor response times among other metrics closely​​.

General Email Analytics:

EmailMeter provides a broad spectrum of email statistics including tracking and measuring email volumes, individual productivity, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) alongside response times​​.

Visual Analytics:

Visual progress tracking over time is facilitated with daily, weekly, and monthly breakdowns, which could be crucial for a business in evaluating its email response efficiency​​.

Data Accessibility:

With EmailMeter, you can access up to 2 years of past data which can be exported in CSV format. This feature might come in handy for historical analysis and reporting​.

Pricing:

EmailMeter offers a free version for basic email analytics. Its paid plans start at $15 per month and unlock advanced features like extended data access.

3. Mixmax

Mixmax is a Gmail response time tracking tool that offers a variety of features to help users improve their email workflow, including email tracking, email scheduling, and email templates. Mixmax also tracks the time it takes users to respond to emails and provides users with detailed reports on their email response time.

MixMax is a multifaceted tool that goes beyond just email tracking, offering a suite of features to enhance email productivity, analytics, and engagement. Here are the aspects of MixMax that pertain to email time tracking along with its pricing:

Features:

Real-Time Email Tracking:

MixMax provides real-time tracking of email opens, clicks, and overall engagement, which can be crucial for understanding recipient interaction and response times​.

Basic and Advanced Tracking:

With basic tracking, you can see if, when, and how many times your email was opened. An upcoming feature, Advanced Tracking, will provide insights into the geographic location of where your email was opened and on what device it was viewed. For group emails, you’ll see exactly who opened it​​.

Email Tracking and Analytics:

The tool helps analyze which emails work best for sales and marketing campaigns by providing powerful insights about recipient engagement through its tracking tools​​.

Reporting & Analytics:

Available in certain pricing tiers, this feature helps provide a detailed analysis of response time and engagement rates, aiding in informed decision making.

Pricing:

Mixmax has a free plan for teams under five people, with features like instant scheduling, email tracking, and email templates. Its paid plans start at $29 per user per month and offer more functionality. You can also get a custom enterprise plan if you’re a larger team that requires enterprise controls & custom setup.

Note: Mixmax has a unique pricing model in the sense that its cost varies depending on the number of messages sent and the number of words written in the emails. For instance, they charge $1 per 1,000 messages sent for free users, and $10 for 10,000 messages. The per-word charge is $0.02 for free users and $0.05 for paid users​​.

4. Streak

Streak is tailored towards integrating a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system within Gmail, but it also boasts features that can be leveraged for email time tracking. 

Here’s how Streak can be utilized as a time-tracking tool alongside its pricing:

Features:

Email Tracking:

Streak provides free email view tracking that allows you to see if your recipients opened your email, how many times they opened it, and when each view happened​​.

You can also send mass emails to only those recipients who viewed your last email, thereby improving your response rate and saving time​​.

The email tracking feature is part of the free plan which you can start using by just downloading the free Chrome extension, making it easy to begin collecting data without any additional effort​​.

Analytics:

Although detailed analytics regarding response times aren’t explicitly mentioned, the email view tracking feature could provide a base layer of analytics to measure how quickly recipients are viewing your emails.

Pricing:

Streak has a forever free plan for individuals with basic CRM functionalities along with email tracking​​. Its paid plans start at $49 per user per month and are suited for businesses of any size, looking for a complete CRM.

Streak’s free email view tracking feature can be a starting point for businesses looking to monitor email responsiveness within Gmail. The pricing structure allows for scaling up to more comprehensive CRM functionalities as needed, albeit the details regarding advanced email time tracking analytics are not explicitly outlined.

5. Gmelius

Gmelius is a collaboration platform integrated within Gmail, offering an array of features to streamline email management and team collaboration. 

Here’s a glimpse of its features and pricing concerning email time tracking:

Features:

Email Tracking:

While the exact specifics of email time tracking aren’t delineated, Gmelius does provide powerful analytics for teams, which could be utilized to monitor email response times and enhance overall email management strategies​​.

Analytics:

Gmelius offers robust analytics that might be utilized to scrutinize email response times and overall email engagement, aiding in optimizing daily operations​.

Automation:

The platform also houses features like sequences, email scheduling, email templates, auto follow-ups, and CRM integration, all of which can be instrumental in managing email response times more effectively​.

Collaboration:

By converting email inboxes into a workspace for team collaboration, Gmelius facilitates managing projects and client interactions directly within the Gmail platform, which can indirectly contribute to better email time management​.

Pricing:

Gmelius offers a 7-day free trial for its premium plans, which could be a good opportunity to explore its email time tracking features​​. It’s paid plans start at $12 per user per month.

Gmelius vs. DragApp vs. Hiver: What to Choose in 2024 (Comparison)

Gmelius’ blend of analytics, automation, and collaboration within Gmail makes it a potent tool for businesses keen on enhancing their email response time tracking and overall email management operations.

How to choose a Gmail response time tracking tool?

When choosing a Gmail response time tracking tool, it’s important to consider the following factors:

• Features: What features are important to you? Do you need a tool that can track your response time by sender, day of the week, or time of day? Do you need a tool that can generate reports?
• Ease of use: How easy is the tool to use? Can you easily set up your account and start tracking your response time?
• Price: How much does the tool cost? Are there any free or limited free plans available?

Once you’ve considered these factors, you can start to narrow down your choices.

Or, if you’re looking to get started, try Hiver for free today!