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.
Before each holiday or irregular business day that your office will be closed, follow this checklist to ensure your excellent customer service continues and your business remains safe throughout the closure.
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Next, click Send automatic replies.Tick the “Only send during this time range” box. Set the dates you’ll be out of the office. You can skip this step if you want to manually turn off automatic replies when you get back to the office.Then set your automatic out of office reply under the Inside My Organization tab. This will be the automatic response sent to people from your company who email you while you’re away.
Hello! Thanks for getting in touch. I’m out of the office until [DATE] with limited access to email. But never fear! I’ve left you with some helpful writing tips to read and share.
I will be out of the office for an extended period starting on (Starting date) until (End date).
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Ha reminds me of an admin here once who would leave like 10 bullet points on who to contact for what. We got a kick out of the point that was “for catering emergencies…contact…”.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
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I work at an animal shelter and I have included a picture of an adoptable pet when I’m on vacation – I don’t know if that comes across as annoying or not, what do you think? Basically, it’s “I’m out until X and I’ll return your message when I get back. In the meantime, take a look at Fluffiekins here (picture, link to bio). Will she be adopted before I return?”
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I like funny OOO – but I am a bad offender regarding these and may slightly overshare. I recently had to be in and out for eye surgery and this was mine:
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 this is a good representation of this individual’s personality, then I think they would be a fun co-worker and a reasonable boss.
An away message will generally be a 160-character auto-reply message that can be turned on or off as needed.
Apologies, but I’m currently knee-deep in sushi and shrines on the other side of the world in Japan. I will be back to the usual tea and crumpets when I return to the office on Tuesday 30th May.
With all that in mind, take a look at the following tips and tricks and six examples to make your automatic responses more effective: