If you are reading this, it is because John Whatsisname cannot help you – he has left the company and no longer uses this email address.
I’ll be on maternity leave from [DATE] until [DATE]. For general inquiries about [DEPARTMENT/ROLE], please email [CONTACT NAME]. If this matter is not time-sensitive, feel free to resend your email in [MONTH] when I will be regularly checking emails again.
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You don’t have to inform people why you are out of the office, adds Gugino Panté. “Because of privacy or safety issues, you may not want to state that you are on vacation or at a conference,” she says. “Simply stating that you are out of the office should be sufficient enough.”
Out of office (OOO), messages can be an incredible tool to fuel your success. A good away message allows you to tell your customers that you’re away and encourages them to move within the sales funnel with more ease. Using automated messages during holidays or conferences can create social connections with recipients.
If you’re at a work event (e.g. a conference)If you’re off sickIf you’re working from a different location
As to who you choose, you might consider listing a coworker, your supervisor, or an on-call number if available. Just make sure to clear this with whomever you pick as a support person so they’re aware they’re backing up your calls and emails for emergent situations.
Half of the auto-replies I get are for very specific chunks of time. Like, if you are out of the office for three hours I don’t need to know, dude.
Just because you are away, you still have the chance to keep the business going. Let your email work for you, by offering different things that will ultimately increase the chance to attract new customers. Your marketing team will be so grateful!
An autoresponder email message is a notification that you receive when the person you are trying to reach is out of the office. These messages …
In spite of your best efforts to notify people ahead of time, not everyone will get the notification that you're going to be shut down. Make sure that you: Post signs about the shutdown and when you will be back Change your voicemail message and have a plan for what to do if your voicemail is full: will it notify you? Is there an alternate number to call? Put together an "out of office" email that lets people who attempt to contact you know when you will be back Make sure you have a call tree for emergencies, and that everyone knows who he or she will be responsible for calling in the event of an emergency
1) Communicate when a person will be back, or if they are out for an indeterminate period of time, tell me who I should be contacting instead 2) Communicate what I should expect. (For example, when I do my monthly reports, I have an out of office message that says that I’ll be slow to respond. I *will* actually check my email at least a couple of times, but I generally won’t respond to anything non-urgent.) 3) If the person is in a job that handles urgent requests, list who I need to contact instead if it can’t wait until they get back.
Of course, every message sends a message, even a barebones OOO that seems to say nothing more than that you’re away until next week, so why not try to inject a little personality? You could get quirky by giving your auto-responder robot a personality. You could dispense with words altogether and substitute a gif or emojis. Or how about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada? It might be worth noting here that the amount of personality you inject depends on your trade. What earns you cachet in the creative industries might backfire in the financial sector, for instance.
Actually, it isn’t working other than when I am driving. I’ve contacted AT&T, and Apple today. It won’t just set as an auto reply whenever it is needed. I have clients texting me right now after hours and it is so stressful when I am trying to decompress and get away from the work day at night. Do you have any tips?? HELP!!
Setting your out of office may be different depending on the email provider you use. But whether you’re on Outlook, Gmail, or another platform, it should be a relatively straightforward process.
Editor's Note: This was originally posted in July 2018 and updated and republished on the date posted in the article. Enjoy!
I have a co-worker who isn’t exactly known as a hard worker. To the point that the fact she’s still employed has been a real hit to the overall team morale. Anyway, she has an auto-reply that basically says, “I’m at work but I’m really overwhelmed by all the things I have to do today so I will get back to you when I can.” Makes us all even angrier that she still has a job.
In the early 2000s I received an OOO which said “[very senior person] never reads his email, please resend your message to [his PA]”. Post navigation ← coworker loves to abuse robocallers, boss uses Facebook photos without permission, and more Ask a Manager in the media →