After a long hour at work, I like to get home, kick my slippers off and watch my wild dolphin, Jasper-Barnaby, swim in the moat. There’s nothing more relaxing than observing a wild dolphin at play in one’s backyard. My personal vocal-coach, Lyndon, once said that watching the sunset on my estate is the closest he’s ever come to God. I believe him.
In this image, you’re letting people know you’re OOO with a “Missing” notice on a milk carton. Genius. Just be careful — this sort of autoresponder is best for internal emails, not for autoresponders that get sent to prospects and clients.
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I ran a nonprofit organization staffed entirely be volunteers (I was one). After one too many people incensed that we did not follow up to their emails within two hours, we had to include an OOO message that said we were a volunteer organization, and any request may take up to two weeks to process. Please email again if you have not heard from us by then.
An Out of office Message is the autoresponder feature within your email settings that allows you to automatically send a response when an email is sent to a specific email address. Typically, businesses will use the autoresponder feature to confirm receipt of an email and to acknowledge and thank customers for an order that may have been placed.
The reason I did it was that the first time I took maternity leave, I came back to thousands of irrelevant emails. It was a chore to sort through them, and finding the ones that were still relevant was like finding a needle in a haystack. And it wasn’t just a waste of *my* time – I often had to reach out to email senders only to hear that no further action was needed, so I was wasting their time too.
This works fine but I notice it also adds after your auto-responder at the bottom an option for them to reply “urgent” to ensure I receive notifications which seems damn pointless if you ask me. Is there a way to switch that off because it seems to be counter-intuitive to setting the auto-responder that you’re not there or on leave? Thanks Trace
You can contact my colleagues from our different departments regarding the following cases :
Thank you for your e-mail. I will be on leave on 26th Jan with no access to email. I will revert to you on my return on 27th Jan.
Website: https://purelovemessages.com/office-closed-for-holiday-message-template/
Before I implemented this system, I got *way* too many calls asking if so-and-so was out of the office that day when an OOO tells them that Bob will be back in three hours and to call Sue in the interim. The OOOs have reduced status check calls to practically zero, and the OOO preview pops up in our system as soon someone’s email is entered.
“Hi, Thank you for contacting me. I’m currently out of the office for a conference and will not be available until [date]. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
3. We do holidays our own way. When you hear the name Black Friday, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? It’s probably one of the following: discounts, sales, or free shipping.
While you shouldn’t use a vacation message like the first example in this article, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of fun with your emails.
For those of you arguing that entrepreneurs and salespeople must always be available, I present to you Exhibit A. While this is specific to Yesware (and you should check out their other OOO examples), it's easy enough to tweak to fit your industry.
Please include their names, phone numbers, and email addresses. If you handle multiple areas, let colleagues and clients know what each person specializes in so they can contact the right person for help.
We have an office with a phone number and 4 people that work in it to specifically answer these inquiries.
But perhaps we have it all wrong, and are simply enslaving ourselves further to technology by toiling over OOOs that are personality-packed, marketing-friendly perfection. Maybe we need to be altogether more standoffish if we want to make our OOOs really work for us? NYU Professor Meredith Broussard, who’s the author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, takes the inspiration for her OOO from US writer, poet and children’s author E.B. White, who once turned down an invitation from President Eisenhower with the words “I must decline, for secret reasons”. Accordingly, Broussard’s OOO reads simply: “I am out of the office, for secret reasons.”