That’s the way ours is set up, so anyone who was emailing that guy at the time would have seen it.
I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
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If you want to learn how to set up your OOO message with a self-hosted email, you can follow our quick guide called How to Create Email AutoResponder in cPanel.
I apologise for this blunt email, yet feel I must warn customers and shareholders to divest yourself of any interests you hold in this company as the **** is about to hit the fan.
10. "Hello, you've reached [X company]. We can't take your call right now, but please leave your name, contact information, and reason for reaching out, and one of our team members will be in touch within 24 hours."
Thank you for your email. Your message is important to me and I will respond as soon as possible. Thank you!
I read it as coming from a person who was overly frustrated with their regular OOO being ignored. It’s one of my pet peeves – the OOO clearly says I’m not there and to contact Bob, yet the sender continues to reply, never contacts Bob, then blows up at me when I return that their work is delayed. I would love to be able to send something like this message in the letter but it wouldn’t fly at my office.
Me too. I don’t say why I’m going to be out when I take time off either, unless it’s a vacation I’m really excited about and just talk about naturally.
My coworker tends to set his OOO for people to contact me, but he never bothers to tell me he’s going to be out of town and people may be contacting me. I’ll find out when I happen to email him and get the response. Not a huge deal, but the heads up would be nice! What if I was also on vacation?
I definitely hate the overshares. And I have one coworker whose rigidly precise & formal language comes off as pretentious and condescending. She sets up an out of office every time she leaves slightly early, so I get them A LOT.
As a matter of courtesy – and to give you the peace of mind needed to be present wherever you are going (either away from the office or on vacation) – you should send each of your clients a simple email to let them know you’ll be away. Below I’ve offered some sample text for to you use as a template. Feel free to make it a TextExpander snippet, Gmail canned response, or whatever. Just use it (or something like it). Please.
Hello, I will be out of the office [DATE] through [DATE] returning [DATE]. If you need immediate assistance during my absence, please contact [CONTACT NAME] at [EMAIL]. Otherwise, I will respond to your emails as soon as possible upon my return. Warm regards.
I’ll be 1 percent connected while on vacation so I’m not 100 percent panicked on return. Thank you for emailing me.
I try to substitute “parental leave” for “maternity leave” whenever possible. Trying to normalize it as a benefit to all employees (at my company) rather than a special lady-vacation.
While you’re writing and activating your out-of-office message, sidestep these pitfalls:
I had this at my old job, but only for internal calls. It was a completely different person on an old job site. IT couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Only one person complained at least, no matter how many times I told her I couldn’t fix it.
Thank you for your email. Your message is important to (Us/Me) and (I/We) will respond as soon as possible.