People are naturally impatient, and when they are looking for answers to their questions, they want them as soon as possible. That’s why some recipients of your auto-reply messages won’t be happy if they just get some information that you are gone and have to wait for your return. In such cases, you need to provide an alternative point of contact for urgent matters.
Hoo boy, have I got some PTSD from Old Job about out of office autoreplies. Exboss was such a stickler for them and actually enforced her expectations as official policy. Meaning if you didn’t do it to her exact specs, she’d call you back to the office to do it (which no one did) and read you the riot act afterwards while threatening to write you up for insubordination. She demanded them any time that we were away from our desk for longer than 30 minutes and for anything other than a meeting. So training in the conference room down the hall, a work lunch with teammates, leaving an hour early for an appointment, arriving late for an appointment, even working from home, all required OOO alerts.
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You got this email immediately (classic autoresponder behavior), which means I’m out of office on vacation.
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I think in an industry/company culture where that kind of responsiveness is expected/normal, that makes a lot of sense!
To make sure your email doesn’t get lost in a sea of messages please resend it on September 20th. If your message is urgent you can contact [contact’s name] on [contact’s email].
I only set my out of office if I’m going to be gone for more than one full day. Like, right now I don’t bother if I’m going to be out for one day, because in general the people who email me either know I’m out for a day or are unfazed by waiting 24 hours for a response. The last time I went out of office for a week, I came back to about 65 emails, 9 of which would have actually required my attention when I weeded through them. If I got a higher email volume, I’d do for a single day though.
If you work in an international setting, you should eventually prepare an out-of-office message in English to notify people of your absence and tell the recipient who to contact in case they need an immediate response.
Here are some samples and templates of automatic reply messages across various scenarios.
I know I’m so late on this, but my FAVORITE one I’ve ever gotten was from one of my company’s Presidents (so a very high up muckity muck type).
I forgot I did that and it was pointed out by a recruiter who was trying to reach me to schedule a phone screen. Whoops, haha.
Shoot, you just missed me. I wrapped up everything at the office and am off on vacation until [DAY OF WEEK], [DATE]. Anyway, if your question or favor can wait, great. If not, do me a favor and forward your email to [EMAIL] and you’ll be well-treated. Thanks.
Now the last part is to bring up the DND mode to the Control Center, where you can turn on the DND mode to make your iPhone respond to calls and messages with an automated vacation message that you set.
It definitely sounds like something my boss would write and I laughed at it. In our work, everyone thinks that they’re a special emergency all the time. Stopping to think “if I don’t have this in the next two days what will the actual consequences be” is a thing that should happen more but doesn’t.
While not QUITE as annoying as “Have a great day!” there are several people/departments who use an auto reply for the most frequently asked questions or information for their department…something along the line of an IT auto response that says: “To submit an IT request or check for an updated status on a request, please visit request.business.com”
Thank you for your email. Your message is important to (Us/Me) and (I/We) will respond as soon as possible.
Here are four tips to help you create an effective after-hours voicemail greeting: 1. State your business name and hours of operation upfront. The first thing your callers should hear is the name of your business or organization. If they are calling when you are closed you should also be sure to let them know your standard business hours.