Dear Customer, Our office will be closed from [date] until [date] and close again for December and January to welcome the New Year. We wish you the warmest holiday. Regards, [Company name]
Or they work with one or more of those people that call you 5 minutes after sending an email if you don’t reply.
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We used to do this at my old job in addition to OOO messages. I found it useful to know in advance how long people were going to be gone. There’s nothing more annoying than needing something urgently from the one person who can help and then getting an auto-response saying they’re out for the next 2 weeks.
It’s my favorite time of year, which means I’m currently out of the office lounging on a Carribean beach, sipping on mojitos, and attempting to achieve the tan I’ve been waiting all year long for.
I run a summer camp and i can’t convince IT to forward the phone off season (and I forget to check those voicemails when they aren’t flashing in front of me), so the voicemail there says “You’ve reached camp, we are closed for the season, and voicemails on this machine are not checked. you can contact me at our head office at X or email me at [email protected], repeat info, thanks!
Every customer interaction is important to showcase your brand personality, and auto-reply messages are no exclusion. That’s why you must make the right use of every opportunity and convert it into a good experience. Automated reply messages help you provide a great customer experience and also sets the right expectation.
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.
Hi, This is an automated reply because I am currently out of the office until [MM/DD]. Did you email me to know more about [product/sale/service/etc]. If you did, take a look at this [ebook/brochure/infographic/etc]. I’ll be sure to answer any questions you may have about it upon my return.
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My European colleagues get an extended summer holiday all at the same time, which means we get OOO notes like this:
Wow, it’s a bloody snooze fest over here! Just kidding, this option is the most appropriate for 95% of business out-of-office responses. It’s simple, no-nonsense, and tells people all they need to know.
It was just this colleague – it (thankfully) wasn’t the culture of the office, and I never saw anyone else abuse the OOO like this.
how-do-you-put-an-out-of-office-message-on-a-public-holiday-118462085 / 5 based on 2 votes.
Finally, if you’re doing something incredible for the holiday break, you may as well let people know about it. Heading skiing for a few weeks, or going on a cruise? Put it in your out of office! It’s not like your emailers can do anything about it.
Others like to take the opportunity to inject a little personality and make the reader smile, like our very own Rachael’s summertime out-of-office:
It doesn’t matter whether you’re going to be out of the office for a few days, or a few months – if you’re going on vacation, it’s critical to remember to set up your out-of-office autoresponder.
Which is why the workers who do have the ability, whether through place within the hierarchy or company culture, should not squander it. In fact, they should recognize the OOO as an opportunity to model and normalize organizational or even industry-wide guardrails (as opposed to bullshit feebly-maintained ‘boundaries’). It’s why, starting this summer, we need to embrace the blunt, descriptive OOO message.