I’m on vacation until July 18th. If you need to reach me, here’s what you’ll need to do: First, travel to my homeland of Florida. Climb to the highest peak of the tallest mountain. Find a rare flower (no specifics, of course... It’d be cheating). Put the flower back, because as the old hiking rule goes, “Leave everything as you found it.”
My colleague does that just for holidays.. it does say who else to contact, but tbh if I’m emailing him a couple of days before he’s due to return then I’m not massively impressed at the insinuation I should take the action of remembering to resend it… in reality I think he probably does read *some* emails but clearly views the OOO as a way to absolve responsibility if he misses something..
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One thing that really bothers me in out of office messages is “contact my supervisor” without listing the supervisor’s name. I work in a company with 4 large service departments, and each department is broken into multiple smaller teams. I don’t have a great grasp on who is on or who leads which smaller team, and we don’t have an org chart with that much detail readily available. If you’re saying to contact someone, I think you should always include the person’s name and contact information, not just “my supervisor”, “one of my team members”, etc. !
I have always been flabbergasted by people who include vacation details (especially if they’ll be out of the country) in their OOO messages. I’m not a burglar, nor do I know any. (I hope!) But the people with the message don’t know that!
There’s a term that we like to use around here called “snowbirds,” which is used to describe those who once resided in the northern part of the U.S., only to flee to warmer parts of the country during the winter.
First things first: let’s go over the basics of an OOO email. In your away message, you typically include the following: A quick “I’m out of the office” phrase. The date or time range you’ll be out. Who to reach out to in case the sender needs immediate attention. A sign-off.
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I’ll also admit to not changing my voicemail for OoO in the past 3 or 4 years. I rarely get calls anymore it’s just not worth it… I figure if they don’t reach me by phone they’ve already emailed me or will email me after the voicemail.
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.
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6. "Hi, this is [your name]. I'm either on a call or away from my desk. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message and I'll get back to you. Thank you."
Before we further discuss some of the examples of a good out of office message, decide for yourself what you want to get from it and what tone are you going to use.
Dear Customer, Thank you for your email Inquiry, Our office closed is closed celebrating [HOLIDAY]. We will not be able to respond to your email until [date]. Apologize for the delay. We wish you a wonderful holiday season. Best regards.
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I just say out of the office. It helps that I have a room that, among other things, functions as an office, but I don’t think that would change my reply. Whether its a real or metaphorical office, you’re still not at work, so it counts.
The auto-reply will stop on the date you set for it to stop. If you did not set a start and end date, it may be using a date that is already past. Check this in Gear Icon>Automatic Replies>End Time.