Meanwhile, I do sometimes put up long ones when I will be away for some days during a season in which there are a confluence of three or four very likely reasons someone would contact me, and who else they need to contact isn’t the same. Like, it’s high llama grooming season, and generally during this month I get two or three requests per week for each of llama bleaching (for which my backup is Stella), llama shaving (for which it’s Arturo), and llama perming (for which it’s Carter). My message says I’ll be out until blah blah, and if it’s not an urgent llama grooming issue, I’ll get back to you after that, but meanwhile, for urgent llama grooming here’s who to call.
Website: https://oit.colorado.edu/services/voice-communications/voicemail/manage-greetings
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While injecting a little humor into your vacation email message can sometimes be a good idea – depending on your company and contacts – avoid oversharing and keep it professional at all times.
When one of my colleagues is out of the office, he doesn’t mess around. In fact, he’s turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary from fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.
At my old job we had a short script for our voice mail messages including whether we were in the office or out of the office. We were specifically told not to say why we were out of the office for personal privacy and protection reasons. However, an exception was soon made–for jury duty. Callers were getting freaked out when they got the message “I’m out of the office and don’t know when I will return.” They would be worried about the person they were calling and worried about whether or not they would be able to get the info they needed. So if on jury duty we would say, “I’m out of the office on jury duty and don’t know when I will return.”
Top of the iceberg though. Oh, and she also works with external contacts, including prospective clients.
Many in the MIT community will be taking vacation around the holidays and new year. If you’re in that group, you’ll want to set up automatic replies for your email and MITvoip phone. You can do this at work or at home. Read on for basic information and tips about auto-replies. Step-by-step instructions are available through the links provided.
“Thank you for your message. I am out of the office today with no access to phone. I will be back on April 5. In case you need any immediate help, you can reach [person] at [phone number].”
Thanks for your email. Right now I am camping in the countryside with my family which means I will be completely switching off from all technology for a few days (gasp!).
Earlier this year, British comedian Steve Coogan underscored a growing trend to rethink the OOO when he used it not to advertise his own absence, but rather the return to our screens of his blazer-clad alter ego, hapless media personality Alan Partridge. Written in the broadcaster’s inimitable voice, it had stern words for anyone who dared email him: “I’m not in the office so both cannot and will not respond to your email,” it began. “If your email is urgent, perhaps you should have tried calling instead. The very fact you were content to type out your query long hand and settle back to wait for a reply suggests you can wait, even if you’ve put a red exclamation next to your email to make it stand out in my inbox. Won’t wash with me, that.”
Hello, our office will remain closed for during the Christmas period. We assure you that all your emails will be responded to as soon as we return to the office. Merry Christmas! Regards, [Name/Company name]
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Again, this will depend HUGELY on what sort of role it is (an external-facing vendor, for example, should probably not use something like this). But for many internal requests, it is not power-tripping to ask someone to either redirect their email or wait until a later date to send it.
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.”
3. Suggest Reading the Documentation. This is the office closed for holiday template that our support team uses. If you have an extensive documentation published on your site, you can recommend users to read the documentation while you get back to your users.
This is hilarious. I always read those kinds of efficiency hacks and think “wow, I wish I had the kind of job that let me set hard, weird boundaries for myself that inconvenience everyone else,” and now I learn that I apparently could have just asserted it without it being appropriate at all.
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.