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.
Hah! Maternity/parental leave is often 1 year here, so there is zero expectation you will read or “catch up” afterwards. We keep our email addresses during where I work (Canadian government), so it’s standard to put an OOO that just says “on parental leave. Please contact X instead” with no reference to actually reviewing any of those emails, and often not even a projected date of return since people often flex their return date or take extra time, or just return to a different position entirely (out of choice).
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If you do not resend your email to the appropriate person as outlined above, it will not be read. I am not checking email during this time, and my emails are not being forwarded to someone else to check, either. Please also understand that it will take me some time to respond to you once I am back.
With all that in mind, read on for a few examples of what you might actually write...
“Happy Holidays” is typically used when you aren't really sure what holiday someone celebrates. In that instance you are replacing Christmas or Hanakkuh with the word Holiday making it a proper noun, which means it should be capitalized.
After all, most of us long to fully detach while we’re away and we know it’s the healthier and more restorative thing to do. Yet we’re concerned that actually doing so might appear reckless or irresponsible to our clients and colleagues.
Josh Kopelman’s vacation email is a classic example of taking a blunt approach at OOO messages.
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.
Our Public Service Announcement: Each year, Americans leave 700 million DAYS of paid time off on the table. Stop and think about how many great out of office reply opportunities are missed because of this!
If you’re reading this, the train wasn’t able to push the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour, and I’m stuck in 1885. I won’t be able to respond to emails until exactly 8:30 a.m. EST on [DAY OF WEEK], [DATE]. If there’s an emergency, good luck. Try to get ahold of Doc.
Same. There are a few people that are regularly in charge of things I need from them, but are part time. The vast majority of our office is full time. I have no idea when they’ll get back to me, or if I should email someone else. If I saw an OOO message every time they were gonna be gone Th-Fri, I would learn their schedule faster, and hopefully have the most up to date info about “oh, they changed their schedule due to Memorial Day, I can email them and get a response quicker this week” or whatever the issue is.
COMPLETELY agree. Every time I see an OOO for a two-hour doctor’s appointment I have to fight the urge to reply with “How much are you paid?” because I know there is no scenario in which I would have to explain myself if I don’t answer an email for a few hours and if you are that important you better make a LOT more than I do.
My outgoing voicemail message says “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, send me an email instead”
Huge pet peeve – several of my coworkers still have COVID-related out of office notifications. I didn’t find them necessary in the first place, since everyone was still working from home and should have been checking emails normally, but it’s especially weird now that we’re officially back in the office a couple of days a week. It feels like they’re making a preemptive excuse for responding slowly. I’m surprised management hasn’t said something, honestly.
I think simple is best, and also safest. I found the message in the post amusing as an AAM article, but if I had contacted this person on a serious and/or urgent work matter I would probably be annoyed by the comedy skit. And I was contacting them because they had messed up somehow, it would land very badly.
Front makes it easy to save vacation responders and turn them on and off. If you're not on Front (yet!) here's how to save one in Gmail or Outlook. Then just copy your message into your vacation responder, rest assured your emails will get a response, and hit that glorious "Sign out" button.
Help your users know when to expect a response. It’s easy to show customers your team’s availability and let them know when they can get assistance from your team. You can manage their expectations by setting your office hours and expected response time.