6.) Bienvenue chez John Doe. Notre service téléphonique n’est pas occupé pendant les vacances. Les heures d’ouvertures peuvent être trouvés sur notre site www.johndoe.de. Nous vous remercions pour votre confiance et nous vous souhaitons d’agréables vacances et une bonne nouvelle année.
This list of 25 out of office message examples for holidays are perfect to use for your autoresponder. ----- Hello, Thanks for your email. I'm currently out of the office, returning on [date]. I'll respond to your message then. While I won't be quite as far as the North Pole, I will still be completely disconnected from my inbox until my return.
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I physically recoiled at the thought of my face appearing on a new browser tab. UGH. The pets do say who their humans are (usually just first name) and what the pet’s favourite things are. My phone is now filled with memes and photos of my monitor as I send pet photos to friends.
“Celebrating [childs name] birthday today with a dinosaur themed party and reminiscing on this sweet baby I brought home from the hospital 8 years ago #momtears”
I agree that the reasons are not relevant. But at my last company, a coworker had overly short out of office messages. Examples: “out of office today.” Or “out of office until Monday.” With no additional information about coverage, etc. Those always felt overly curt to me and made me wonder, is this person okay? Was this OOO planned or are they on the verge of a mental breakdown? (It was a very toxic culture so this wasn’t out of the question). I would be curious to hear others perspectives on this. Is too little information just as bad?
Like, I don’t feel confident enough to do it myself, but the OOO writer is probably a known Quirky Person and I admire that to an extent.
When I worked at Nightmare Small Business(tm), a coworker went on maternity leave with (privately shared among the staff, but not with the owner) the intent to give her notice at the end rather than return. She left a very professional, concise and informative out of office message. The owner proceeded to log in to her email and change the message to include saccharine references to both the pregnancy/baby and how much she “missed” being away from clients and how excited she was to return soon.
Hello, We are currently closed for the holiday. If it’s something urgent you can email [name] at [email]. Kind regards. [Name/signature]
The above automated messages do not sound assuring as the time is not specified in terms of hours, days, or week. Here is a good example that businesses can follow to deliver effective customer service communication.
The subject line. This is the very first thing your customer will see, before they even open your email. The opener. The first line is what greets the customer as soon as they open your email. The “thank you” The body. The email signature.
I have a colleague who usually does different ones for internal and external: internal will be “I’m currently in the pouring rain in a tent in the Cotswolds. I get back (hopefully without trenchfoot!) on Monday Date. Whilst I’m getting soggy please contact Email Address.” and external is just “I’m on annual leave between X and Y and will not be accessing my email. Please contact Email Address if you need assistance during this time.” We all really like their internal ones.
Problem: Emails sent from an email client, like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, result in... Set up multi-factor authentication for Office 365 users
I was once horrified as an HR person, and amused as a normal person, by an OOO from an employee who had left the company. They had booked vacation for their last week or so, and while I can’t remember the exact text, it said that they were no longer with the company and they were happy to leave and never come back. I think “to this hellhole” was only implied.
But interestingly enough, exboss never set her out of office emails when she was out of the office or teleworking. Curious how the rules never applied to her. So glad to get away from her. This isn’t even the tip of the Toxic Boss Iceberg that was her. You are unavailable until x date, and I’ll get back to you after that date. Done. (sorry, didn’t think about email OOO stuff. Hey, it’s the 90’s here at my work place.)
Live support will be unavailable during our closure. Emergency support requests should be submitted via our contact form or via Basecamp if your project is currently active. We wish all of our clients a very happy and safe 4th of July holiday. We look forward to working with you when we get back from a well deserved long weekend. See you next week!
There ought to be a word - and perhaps there is, in German - for the mix of feelings that accompanies composing and activating a holiday out-of-office message. There's smugness, of course, and a gratifying sense of laying down one's virtual tools after a horribly long shift. But for many of us, these nice feelings are tempered by the knowledge that in two weeks, refreshed but depressed, we will have to trawl through hundreds of emails, many of which will be conference room notifications for meetings about crises that have passed.
Erin Ollila is a content strategist and writer who believes in the power of words and how a message can inform — and even transform — its intended audience. Reach out to her on Instagram at @ErinOllila, or visit her website erinollila.com.