What's Wrong With Saying "We'll Get Back to You"

‍TL;DR

• "We'll get back to you" sounds harmless, even polite. To the person hearing it, it usually reads as an open-ended delay with no actual timeline attached.
• Customers have a real, specific expectation here, more people value a 60-second response from a bot than a 24-hour response from a human, according to SalesAPE's 2026 workplace AI survey. The problem isn't that a person isn't answering immediately. It's that nothing answers immediately.
• The fix isn't skipping the human step, people still overwhelmingly want a person involved for anything substantial. It's making sure the first acknowledgment happens instantly, even if the actual solution still needs a person's attention afterward.

"We'll get back to you" is one of those phrases that sounds completely reasonable to say and often lands badly to hear. It's polite. It's honest, in the sense that someone probably will get back to the customer eventually. And it still manages to leave the person on the other end with no real sense of when, or whether, anything is actually happening.

A phrase that sounds reasonable and isn't

The problem isn't the intention behind the phrase. It's what it actually communicates versus what it sounds like it's communicating. To the person saying it, "we'll get back to you" often means "we've received this and someone will handle it soon." To the person hearing it, with no specific timeframe attached, it can just as easily mean "we don't have an immediate answer, and we're not committing to when we will."

What the phrase actually promises, and what customers actually expect

This gap matters more than it might seem, because customer expectations on response time have shifted considerably. According to SalesAPE's 2026 workplace AI survey of over 250 US professionals, 54.1% of customers say they'd rather get a 60-second response from a bot than wait 24 hours for a response from a human. That's a real, measurable preference for immediate acknowledgment over a slower, more "personal" response, and "we'll get back to you" typically implies something much closer to the 24-hour end of that comparison, if not longer.

The real fix isn't skipping the human, it's not delaying the acknowledgment

It would be easy to read the previous stat as an argument for automating everything and removing people from the process entirely. That's not what the data actually supports. The same survey found that 89.2% of respondents demand a human expert for the final quote or solution stage, an overwhelming majority. People aren't asking to skip human involvement. They're asking for the waiting to stop being invisible and open-ended.

Put together, these two findings point to something more specific than "be faster" or "hire more people." The actual fix is separating two things that "we'll get back to you" currently smashes together: the acknowledgment that a request was received, and the actual solution to it. The first can and should happen instantly, every time. The second can still take the time it genuinely needs, including a person's full attention, without that time feeling like silence to the customer waiting on it.

What this looks like done right

Instead of "we'll get back to you," a customer hears something specific and immediate; 

1. Their request was received 
2. What happens next
3. A realistic sense of timing.

Even if the real answer requires a person to look into it properly afterward, that's a small shift in substance but a large shift in experience. The customer isn't left wondering whether anything is happening. They know something already has, and they know a person is still going to handle the part that actually needs one.

Worth a look

If your team is currently relying on "we'll get back to you" more than you'd like to admit, it's worth seeing what immediate, specific acknowledgment looks like without skipping the human step where it actually matters. SalesAPE offers a free demo if you'd like to take a look, no pressure either way.

FAQs

Why does "we'll get back to you" frustrate customers even when it's meant politely? 

Because it has no specific timeframe attached, so the customer has no way to know whether that means an hour or several days. The phrase's vagueness, not its intention, is what creates the frustration.

Do customers actually prefer a bot's fast response over a human's slower one? 

For the initial response, often yes. According to SalesAPE's 2026 workplace AI survey, 54.1% of customers value a 60-second response from a bot over a 24-hour response from a human. This reflects a preference for immediate acknowledgment, not a rejection of human involvement overall.

Does this mean businesses should remove humans from customer interactions to be faster? 

No. The same survey found that 89.2% of respondents still want a human expert involved at the final quote or solution stage. The fix is separating immediate acknowledgment from the actual solution, not replacing people with automation across the board.

What should a business say instead of "we'll get back to you"? 

Something specific: confirmation that the request was received, what happens next, and a realistic sense of timing. The goal is removing the open-ended uncertainty, not necessarily providing the full answer immediately if that genuinely requires more time or a person's attention.