And just like that, you covered the essentials. You don’t always need to have a Shakespeare-like auto-responder. If you, however, prefer a little creativity, continue reading- it gets more interesting.
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.
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I still will get urgent messages from coworkers with multiple follow-ups during my OOO period. Then an angry call or email when I return that the response time was too long. When I check with Jane about the status she says she was never contacted about the issue. I always push back “Why didn’t you contact Jane?” but I think a lot of people in my organization like to shift blame when they are behind on their deadlines. If it was really so urgent, why did you wait a week just to get an answer from me?
I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
I feel like this is the only reason to do this, otherwise its just a big piss off.
A great out of office message can improve your business relationships, boost appointments and keep everything in check while you’re resting. The only trick is knowing how to write it. So what’s an out of office message and why do I need one? How to improve your out of office message Tip #1: Cover the essentials Tip #2: Redirect clients to your colleagues Tip #3: Be personal Tip #4: Promote your content Tip #5: Go for something light-hearted Tip #6: Know your limits Tip #7: Keep it spartan Conclusions
I remember a phone tree that at the end of the normal boring options there was “To hear a duck press 8”
If your message requires a response faster than that, please email my manager at [email protected].
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Greatest update to Outlook, ever. We also got this feature for our office VM, and, as a chronic forgot-to-reset-my-VMer, it’s great not to have the first line of EVERY VM my first week back be, “Hey, your OOO message is still on….”.
A. No. Winter break is the shutdown of the University during a time when many activities are generally slow. Because our hospital must operate 24/7 every day of the year, UTMC employees do not have winter break. The same holds true for other essential operations, such as providing safety on all of our campuses.
While a holiday is a great chance to disconnect and relax, you have a lot to take care of before taking a break. One of these things is setting up an auto-response system that sends out automated messages to everybody trying to call and message you when you are on leave. A thoughtful out of office message lets people know you cannot respond because you are on a holiday.
I had coworkers (and people up my chain of command) that did/do this. The thing all those people had/have in common is that they came from the military. So I always took it as a military thing. Curious if that particular coworker had a military background.
I’ll be back at my desk on [date] and will respond to your message immediately. In case you need urgent assistance, please forward an email to [contact name] at [contact email] so that Santa’s little helpers at our shop may look into it.
My project is entirely phone based and we don’t have voicemail, either for the project line or individual staff lines. We used to, but we found we spent so much time returning voicemails and getting people’s voicemails that it led to us missing calls and going in an infinite loop.
If you receive a high volume of customer service texts, you may want an auto-response in place that acknowledges a customer query has been received. This can help buy you some time while attempting to reach as many people as you can. Hello! We received your inquiry and our support team is on it. We’ll get back to you in 20-30 minutes. Thank you for your patience!
But I also believe there’s meaningful power in the mundane cultural norms we set and practice. Email, for better or worse, makes up a large chunk of how knowledge workers communicate. So much of this communication is muddled by broken email habits and larger anxieties around performing productivity. We’re constantly nervous about asking too much of others or doing too little on behalf of our coworkers. But we’re also stuck in work patterns that force us to communicate constantly and normalize working and demanding things from colleagues at all hours.