A system and method for optimizing timing of responses to customer communications comprises a contact center and an operations center. The operations center includes a decision module that receives each communication and determines whether a partial response, such as an acknowledgement that the communication was received, is required. If a partial response is required, a response module sends a partial response to the sender that indicates the communication was received and preferably includes an estimate of the time required for a full response to the communication. All received communications are forwarded to a queue to await processing by an agent. The decision module determines whether a partial response is required based on an estimate of the amount of time required for a full response. If the time estimate is less than a predetermined threshold, a partial response is not sent and the communication is forwarded to a queue for processing.