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.
Click the cog and select ‘Settings’Scroll down to ‘Out of Office AutoReply’Specify a time periodWrite your out of office emailConfirm other details and press ‘Save Changes’
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I will be out of the office until *date*. My colleague *Name* will be happy to assist you.
When you’re trying to contact someone on a matter of importance (or even urgency) on one side of the equation and you find out via an autoresponder that they are away for vacation, it can be incredibly frustrating unless they’ve done the front-end work beforehand. (I’m speaking from personal – and recent – experience here. And worse, there was no auto-responder set up. I had to use the – gasp! – telephone to find out what was going on.)
Boss would put up an OOO when attending an event off-site, but would still be answering their emails, which meant that I would get “Boss said you were the correct contact, can you help?” Inevitably, I would respond and, two hours later, Boss would too, cc-ing me on the original email in which they shared the exact same info I had earlier that day. It was MADDENING.
My colleagues have this weird habit of not using out of office messages, but instead, sending all staff or all manager emails before they go on vacation letting everyone know they’re going to be gone for x amount of time. It’s really odd. I do not do this.
Once you’ve finally crossed off those last-minute items on your to-do list and are ready to check out of work mode for while, there’s just one last thing you need to do – set your out-of-office message.
I have a coworker that purposely leaves them on the first day that she’s back in the office (even though it said she would be back today) because she thinks it signals that she’s still unavailable (while she needs some time to catch up.) I think it’s a bit confusing. I personally would feel weird doing it because it seems like I just never came back from vacation.
I’m currently out of the office between [DATES], as I’m attending the yearly WordCamp. Perhaps you will also be there, and we can meet in person.
Explain why you're out. No need to go into great detail that you're traveling to seven different European countries. Simply state whether you're on vacation, at a conference, or on a business trip.
Please note that all queries and orders posted at least [X] days before [starting date of the holidays] or during holidays will be processed immediately once we are back at the store.
8. Standard Out of the Office Email Template. [Greeting] I will be out of the office beginning on (Date of Leave) through (Return Date). For all time-sensitive matters, please contact (Contact Person) at (Contact Email Address).
Here is a good example of setting a queue message when all your support agents are busy.
Hi there, Thank you for reaching out! We are currently in the middle of our busy season so our reply may be delayed up to three days. We appreciate your patience while we look into this for you! Thank you.
I had a coworker once who hated it when she got somebody’s out of office message. I asked her why it got her so bent out of shape. “Because then I have to wait until they get back to send the message again!”
Please note that all queries and orders posted at least [X] days before [starting date of the holidays] or during holidays will be processed immediately once we are back at the store.
Same. I also have a version that is customer facing/external and one that is internal. My coworkers get a little more info.