With the Holiday season right around the corner, your office’s voicemail greeting should quickly inform callers of any potential changes in hours, days or availability.
How's that for an out-of-office message? Probably not ideal. As a working professional, emails are your lifeline. And even when you're not around to respond, you need to let senders know you're not actually ignoring them.
.
I hate when senders ignore the instructions in my OOO message. Usually, my message is something simple like: “I am out [Dates], returning to the office [Date]. Please contact Jane (jane’s email address) in my absence. General [department] questions may be sent to [general dept email address].” To me that says if you are sending me anything then I won’t see it until I return. If you have something you need to be resolved right away, you can contact Jane or send it to our department inbox (where it should be going anyway).
In my office, most of the phone lines just didn’t even have voicemail, because we already got enough abuse in regular phone calls (university parking office). When we switched to VOIP, that went away, but at least now they get *badly* transcribed into our email boxes…
There’s no shame in using Christmas to indulge in your childhood movie tastes, but there is shame in not sharing that adorable side of yourself when people are trying to reach you during the holidays.
I actually stopped changing my VM and out of office right before I left, bc I just did’nt care anymore lol. This was only one of a number of things that this company did that was bonkers.
On the Inside My Organization tab, type the response that you want to send to teammates or colleagues while you are out of the office.
10) I am on vacation from mm/dd to mm/dd. I will allow each sender one email. If you send me multiple emails, I will randomly delete your emails until it is pared down to one. Choose wisely. Please note that you already sent me one email.
Emily was previously on staff at InHerSight, where she researched and wrote about data that described women in the workplace, specifically societal barriers to advancement, and workplace rights. Her bylines include Fast Company and The Glossary Co. Editors' Picks 5 Ways to Tackle the Sunday Scaries 16 No-Guilt Guilty Pleasures That Make Life a Little Sweeter How to Work More Steps Into Your Workday More articles ›
Here are some samples and templates of automatic reply messages across various scenarios.
A) Trying not to roll my eyes at this year’s new batch of corny holiday movies (which all seem to follow the same plot)
I am on emergency leave for today with no access to emails and phone calls. Hence, kindly expect a delayed response. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Free www.grammarly.com https://www.grammarly.com/blog/hilarious-out-of-office-message/
Hello, We are currently closed for the holiday. If it’s something urgent you can email [name] at [email]. Kind regards. [Name/signature]
This message is automated because I won’t be in the office until [DATE]. I will get back to you as soon as possible when I’m back at the office.
An automatic response should include the date when you left, a reason (vacation, sick leave, a conference, etc) and, if possible, the date when you plan to come back. Thank your client for their email, promise to get back to it as soon as possible and apologize for the inconvenience. Also, it should be obvious that you’re out of office from the first sentence.
Or, worse, when someone has left the organization and the organization hasn’t bothered to put up an OOO, so I’m just emailing a blackhole until I call or someone finally checks that inbox. I never fail to set up my OoO reply, and yet most of my external contacts don’t get them. Let’s say I work for LlamaCombs, with an name(@)llamacombs.com address, and this is a company who has two clients AlpacaBrush and VicunaShampoo. I work primarily with the second, and their internal directory lists my contact info as name(@)vicunashampoo.com. It works because any e-mail sent to the second address is auto-forwarded to the first. Except it messes up OoO replies big time. Because the auto-reply is sent to my own alternate address, not to the original sender, and I have no way to change that.