“Depending on your company culture or your potential audience, you can craft a professional message or take a funny, creative approach,” according to Indeed.com.
Have you ever received or written an out-of-office message that you really liked? If you’re up to sharing them, we’d love to see your favorites. Don’t forget to share this post with friends and colleagues!
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There’s no shame in using Christmas to indulge in your childhood movie tastes, but there is shame in not sharing that adorable side of yourself when people are trying to reach you during the holidays.
Amen. I have a co-worker who’s out of office message is always “spending time with my kiddos.” I don’t care. Just tell me who to contact and/or when you’ll be back.
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One of your European connections here. When I know the person covering me will also be away for part of the time I’m gone, I get another colleague to cover for those dates and put that in my OOO. Saying “Your e-mail will not be read” or similar is really off-putting. The youth worker at my church does this and I find it infuriating. Of course it won’t. That’s the point of a holiday. When I get an answer from someone who reads his e-mails on vacation I’m pleasantly surprised.
Don't leave your sender guessing. Let them know when you'll be out and the date you'll be back in the office — not when you're returning home.
When I started at my old job, they gave me a phone number in the directory but forgot to actually issue me a phone for several years! It was great.
Above a certain level in my agency managers have to designate an official delegate when they’re out, which can easily result in out of office messages like what you’ve listed. Not the most elegant, but clear and useful!
A literary agent I follow told the story of a long argument her autoreply had with a would-be author. She’d set up the outbound email while out of town and apparently an author who queried her with his book took offense to it. He replied back in frustration that he didn’t get a personal response. Her autoreply sent back another automated message, which he then in increasing anger kept responding to.
We have people who do this whenever they are teleworking, regardless of the circumstances. Teleworking is working and by putting OOM’s on, you are signaling that perhaps you are NOT, in fact, working. Stop it!
Apart from this, try to limit the details you provide in the message. You just need to inform that you are going on a vacation; you need not give the exact plans. Also, refrain from making it funny. It can be easily misinterpreted and leave a wrong impression.
Physical security is just as important as managing your technology when you are gone for the holidays. Take these key steps to ensure that your office is indeed locked up tight. Make sure no keys are left sitting out where they are easy to see or access. Check with security to make sure that they have keys to get in the building. Check security systems and cameras to be sure that they are fully functional. Make sure that the security system is sending a notification to someone who is actually in town for the holidays, not a manager who is going to be across the country! Lock up desks and filing cabinets, especially those that contain sensitive information. Place all keys in a safe location. Check doors and windows to be sure that they are locked. Review your incident response plan. Do you have a plan for how to respond when everyone is out of the office? This can include everything from a hacker going after your data to a physical emergency at the office.
My favorite OOO to set is something like this: “I’m at sea from X to Y with very limited bandwidth. I’ll reply to urgent emails as soon as possible (but there may be a delay); if you don’t hear back from me by Z, please resend you message.”
In conclusion, an eager customer trying his or her best to reach out to you is the last person you want to disappoint. Make their day special with an unexpected or quirky autoresponder email that your customers wouldn’t have thought they’d see in their inbox in a million years.
Thankfully, setting this up in Gmail is easy to do and only takes a few minutes. Here are step-by-step instructions for setting your out-of-office message, plus some helpful examples you can steal for your own use:
11) Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.