ESPs offer varying levels of service and response based on what you “pay”… Most may not know that and its not published in most cases, but its the hard fact. Be careful about negotiating down the lowest CPM and not using that extra savings to ensure you have adequate support. This can vary from deliverability related responses and remediation to system related issues (delayed sending, image rendering issues, tracking issues, access issues, issues with DB queries) etc.. It doesn’t typically effect mid-market as parity is much closer, but as the contracts increase, volume, and complexity in the program increases, so does the variation in good support/response times. , what you get is a result of what you pay. I learned this the hard way before I ran an ESP and worked with a 1/2 dozen ESPs. Now I run a product operations and the reality of deliverability support, product operations and technical support operations, these realities are not what you hear in pitches and very hard to fact check before you buy. Some do better than others, some are like calling a telecommunications help line, not very helpful.

Thanks David, of course you are right. Some issues are very time sensitive, urgent, and should be handled immediately, while other requsts can wait. How do you see response times as an indicator of budget?

I think you might be right that some retailers don’t care (or don’t know any better), perhaps because the standard of support from other services that they use has set very low expectations.
Given the time-sensitive nature of email, I won’t disagree that 6 hours is too long. That’s the difference between an email going a day late. However, as I said, I reckon you’ll find a skew toward the faster response times of that 6 hour category. Or maybe I’m just hopeful. 🙂
Regarding self-service vs. full-service, if you’re paying for the services of an expert account manager you have every right to expect their direct phone number and immediate resolution to your issue. My guess is that this isn’t always the case, but that’s what you should expect.

Hi Sentori, thanks for your comment.
I’ve seen pretty snail like response times from suppliers, that it is happening is not be the most shocking part. The report is talking about averages, so that is way different the maximum response time (something you want to cover in your SLA) .
 
Seeing an Average response time of more than a day, tied together with the low added value of the ESP. It looks like some retail email
marketers are not with the right supplier at the moment. Or they don’t care.
 
How does this translate back to an individual email marketer once ready to choose / switch? They should think about what their needs are when things go wrong. How important is that quick response? Time is money…. and in retail this can surly be the case if something goes wrong in sending, preparing or other parts of email marketing.
What do you think, should full-service agencies have faster response times than self-service email software suppliers?