Should we stop apologizing for late responses?

After being in the world of business communication for a while, it seems that whenever someone takes a long time to respond, they apologize for it. They say that their personal life is busy, or had other priorities to take care of. The problem is that after seeing this over and over, it loses its effect.

I would do this too, but after giving it some thought, does it even make sense? If it was truly a priority for the other person to get back to you, they would have responded in a timely manner. Maybe there is a rare occasion when it truly is a priority for them, and the message somehow slips by, but I feel like those incidents happen less in the world of business correspondence than it may seem, based on all the emails that start with an apology.

I see this too in forums online. People take a while to respond and then offer an explanation for why, when they do finally respond. But is that necessary?

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be courteous, but instead I am saying we should know that, especially in business communication, there are many competing priorities for people, and we shouldn’t add apologetic fluff to our messages. It just makes it harder for us to see what the main message is. We start to ignore the fluff and get good at finding only the content of the message that matters, and personally I would appreciate a direct no-fluff message, since it shows that at least my time is valued in the absence of promptness.

This opinion is, like all things, subject to change.