What I really hate is when I get back to the office and haven’t taken the 10 minutes to go into our labyrinthian voicemail system, remove the out of office voicemail message, and record a new one (without being interrupted, stuttering, etc.) and some SUPER DUPER HELPFUL person feels the need to InFoRm mE in their voicemail message that I sTiLl HaVe My OuT oF oFfIcE mEsSaGe Up!!!1!
I have a coworker who has an “always-on” autoreply stating that she “is busy with client meetings during the day” and therefore only checks emails at 9am and 3pm. I understand wanting to set the expectation that people won’t get an immediate response, but it really baffles me. If you are still able to respond within 24 hours, why does anyone need this information? To me it feels like some weird self-help tip or power move that they read somewhere that serves no actual function.
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Thank you for your message. I am out of the office from May 1-6 with limited email access. If you need immediate assistance, please contact my assistant editor, Alex Jordan, at [email protected] or 555-432-6100. Otherwise, I will respond to messages upon my return.
Voice mail is a strictly worse medium than almost any alternative. You don’t get the opportunity to converse and ask questions back and forth like you do with a phone call; you can’t extract information efficiently from the message like you can with an email (the old “ugh, I have to listen to this entire message over again just to check one thing he said at the end” scenario).
The information in your after hours greeting should remain concise and essential to the caller's needs. Example: Thank you for calling Cutlas IT Solutions. Our office is currently closed. Regular store hours are 9 am to 7 pm, Monday through Saturday. Please leave a voicemail with your name and phone number for our staff after the beep. 6.
I used to hire a lot (hundreds) of freelance writers who would each be given a deadline by which their particular project was due. As these were large projects, they typically would have several months to complete them. I soon discovered that a significant number of freelancers (at least 25% if I’m remembering correctly) would email a couple of days before their assignment was due to report the sad news that they would be missing their deadline because “someone close to [them] had just died”.
I also do not have an OOO for external people – only internal. I always monitor my email enough to be able to forward important external emails to the right person to handle. IDK why, I just don’t like them having the burden of emailing someone else if I’m out. I’d rather my employee contact them and say “Hey, DataQueen let me know you were having an issue and asked me to connect with you.” My last CEO was out for a full year and almost none of our clients knew (we weren’t trying to hide it, it was just not pertinent to them).
Your ooo also serves to let people know when they can expect you to reply yourself. If that’s not a concern, then I guess you don’t need one.
This used to drive my supervisor crazy, she’d email me “it looks like your OOO is still on.” I had to explain the rationale a few times before she understood.
We're talking about engagement here. Do you have a webinar clients can watch in case they miss your face or want to hear your voice? Do you have a special going for new clients or referrals? Do you have a hot new blog post you wrote just before stepping out? Tell your people to click on that!
When you turn on the DND mode from Control Panel does the auto-reply go to ALL incoming messages and calls or only to those saved in your Contacts? Apple reps have given contradictory answers to this.
4. Respond to Urgent Emails Only. If you’re taking a few days off and want to respond only to urgent emails, this template would be a great fit. Hi (specify the Name field id),
Even the most blunt Out Of Office responders can still offer some levity or can at least entertain. If you’re looking to spice up your OOO, try this wonderful Wikipedia OOO generator that Melody Joy Kramer and Alex Hollender built. It auto-generates an OOO response with either a link or a quote pulled from Wikipedia. It’s a cool little project and a nice starter template for you when you decide to tell everyone to buzz off and leave you alone for a bit.
Then there was the occasional one who would do what Alison mentioned with the sickness excuses, and create a tale that read like a police report: “I must miss my deadline because, on the night of August 12, my 45-year-old sister was alone in her house when an intruder entered. He was a 6’1″ caucasian male wearing a black balaclava and carrying a candlestick. As my sister approached him, with the dog barking around her heels, she heard a distant car crash which led her to have a fatal … etc.” (This is not an actual excuse I received, just similar in detail to some of those that were submitted.) These ones I was pretty sure were a writing exercise, requiring time and effort that could have been put to better use on the actual assignment they had been given.
In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"
Short for automatic reply, auto messages are texts sent without the need for manual intervention. They’re also almost always in response to a triggering action. General auto reply: A pre-written response like an out-of-office message that can be turned on and off.Specific auto reply: This kind of message is only sent when a particular action is taken. For example, when a text-to-join keyword is texted to your number. These are also sometimes referred to as triggers.
Have you ever considered how your office design could be having a negative impact on the way your employees work?