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As for this one I think it’s fine for internal particularly if someone can “read it in her voice” and knows she’s quirky but I’d probably just do a short one for external (or none? because I’ve heard there is some kind of security risk with them?)
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I work in fundraising for after the standard Im out until X, contact Y in the meantime, I also list ways people can give, since thats my job.
I can’t remember if this was just an outgoing voice message before routing you to an individual, or for a voicemail, but I remember a fun December phone message from a small company (I think an insurance agency) sung to the tune of a Christmas carol–something like Jingle Bells. The content was something like: you’ve reached our office during this holiday season, hope your holidays are happy, please 1) leave a message or 2) press X for who you want. Other than the tune, it wasn’t overly holiday-centric (for those who don’t celebrate the holidays) and it was cute.
But the best OOO (actually, an autoreply) came from Ryan Reynolds – you know, the actor and gin company owner. If you emailed him, you got this (I think there were others too – this is the one I got): Thank you for your interest in Aviation American Gin! You’ve reached my Out Of Office Mission Statement.
212-555-1212The following greeting accomplishes this succinctly. Thank you for calling [LinkedPhone – The Work From Anywhere Business Phone System]. Our office is closed until [Monday, January 25th for the holiday weekend]. If your call is urgent, please contact [Anya at 212-555-1212 or [email protected] ].
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2. Include a GIF to make your auto-response more fun. Everyone can appreciate the excitement of pushing work aside to go on vacation. Bring this to life by linking to a GIF in your vacation responder message. Here’s an example out of office reply: Shoot, you just missed me.
Because you can never predict when an emergency will come up, make sure you have someone who can resond to urgent requests. And that person would be your direct manager. But let them know ahead of time so they're not blindsided when they need to respond to something.
In the Settings panel, select “Automatic replies,” then click “Turn on automatic replies.”
If your message is unclear or incomplete, it can create a negative impression on your customers when you are away. For example, if your message does not clearly state what dates you will be unavailable, your clients and co-workers are likely to fill up your inbox with messages, making it difficult for you to catch up when you are back. Failure to include the contact information of the person they can contact in your absence can affect your ongoing projects.
My department still doesn’t allow us to send OOO auto-replies to external recipients because of one incident years ago (a customer tried to contact a sales rep about an urgent order, got the rep’s auto-reply, and in their ensuing panic, somehow got escalated all the way up to the company president). Any external emails we get are auto-forwarded to a centralized mailbox and (ostensibly) handled by another rep while we are out. It bothers me to know that my external contacts won’t get a reponse from me while I’m out and may think I’m just ignoring them.
On that same day, President Eisenhower sent a letter to the Honorable Harvey V. Higley, Administrator of Veterans' Affairs (VA), designating him as Chairman of the Veterans Day National Committee.
People often forget the power of an out of office message. One could even start their own language, as shown below:
I worked in a call center for Big-Evil-Bank for five years, and every new manager would have a different OOO policy/pet peeve that they would require phone-miners to follow. In particular, the memory of the six month period where we were forced to put an OOO up if we left our desk for so much as ONE HOUR smacked me in the face when I saw question. That was by far the worst/strangest/most tedious OOO policy I have ever been forced to follow.
This might seem obvious, but make sure you clearly state and restate the dates you’ll be out of the office. Even if you put the dates in your subject line, you should also repeat them in the message body. It’s hard to over-communicate here. State exactly when you’ll be back, and whether or not you’ll be responding to calls and emails while you’re out. If you’re on the road but are responding to messages, let everyone know if you’ll be unavailable for an extended period (while on a flight, for example), if you’ll be in a different time zone, and in general, that they should expect a delay in response time. All in all, set realistic expectations and strive to be as specific as possible.
So, take a lesson from @courtwhip, editor at PEDESTRIAN.TV, who wrote the above hilarious out-of-office email, fully stocked with mentions of the best movies from the 1990s. (By the way, "Splinter" is from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and as we all know, he loves pizza.)