“This is MY NAME [from COMPANY] calling about REASON. Call me [by DAY/TIME] at (844) 387-6962 [pause, then repeat the number very slowly] that’s eight four four… three, eight, seven… six, nine, six, two.”
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Thank you for being part of our family. Happy holidays!From our family to yours, wishing you a joyful and warm holiday season!We appreciate you continuing to choose us. Here’s to a wonderful next year, too!We love working with you. Hoping you have a fantastic holiday season with plenty of festivities!Making the dream work requires clients like you who believe in us. Happy holidays!We appreciate your business. May you have a happy holiday season!Thank you for believing in us. Let’s look forward to an even better new year. Happy holidays!A big thank you for helping us reach new heights this year. Wishing you a warm holiday greeting!Thank you for choosing us! Happy holidays to you and your family.We value every customer. Happy holidays, and thank you for choosing us!Final Thoughts
Yeah this sort of chain is why we got an out of office address for each department. It went to the managers who were never all off at the same time.
I’d side-eye if an OOO for a couple of days off said that, unless someone was in an unusually time-sensitive role. But if someone’s out for long enough that there’s an alternate contact provided, that’s long enough for them not to be wading through missed emails when they get back.
That would drive me mad. I’m okay with in meetings all day but if you’re just going home at a normal time that’s ridiculous!
This entails informing your loyal customers about the holiday closure of your business in a clear, informative and (optionally) festive manner. Knowing that holidays can be a busy time of the year, we provide you with several pre-drafted email templates that you can use for announcing the holiday closure for your business.
I have a colleague who usually does different ones for internal and external: internal will be “I’m currently in the pouring rain in a tent in the Cotswolds. I get back (hopefully without trenchfoot!) on Monday Date. Whilst I’m getting soggy please contact Email Address.” and external is just “I’m on annual leave between X and Y and will not be accessing my email. Please contact Email Address if you need assistance during this time.” We all really like their internal ones.
There’s just one problem with this approach: you’ve now obligated yourself to regularly check your email the whole time you’re out.
Remember to make sure your auto-reply has a limit to how often it sends replies to any one address. If they reply to every single email they recieve, they can cause problems: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/420oan/companywide_email_30000_employees_autoresponders/ I actually had that happen while I was on vaca, a travel agency e-mailed me with an update about my vacation from a no-reply mail box and triggered my auto reply, which triggered their “This is not a monitored mailbox” auto reply to the tune of 80,000 messages in my mailbox. It completely filled up my “available” space, so everytime I logged in and thought I had them cleared out, more would pour in. It took DAYS to delete all of them.
I have a couple people that I work with though who set them for outside their normal work hours, like they automatically kick on at 4:30pm and off at 8am or whatever, and then there’s the one special snowflake who sets her out of office not only when she leaves for the day every day, but also when she takes her half hour lunch or her fifteen minute break, Jesus wept.
This OoO has to be in the tech sector. I can see something like this as an (internal only) OoO at my workplace. I actually kinda love it. Yes it’s wordy but it also makes the recipient take a beat and consider the importance of their issue and where to go if needed. It will also cut down on interruptions to the “catch-all” person in the standard OoO, which is generally the Admin. I have always hated being the go-to on people’s OoOs. I spent more time trying to find info on what Urgent Emailer insisted was URGENT than I did doing any actual work. And the urgency was never really necessary.
That said, I do realize that I can’t just not use my phone at work. I’m surprised she has not been called on it by her coworkers yet!
Regardless of my general health and hygiene over the silly season, I’ll be back in the office on January 2. 15. “Thank you for your consideration during this festive or not-festive time.”
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Your out of office message can link to testimonials from your happy clients. For those of us in travel, you could try something like: