Start with a friendly greeting. Skip the "Greetings," "Salutations," "Dear sir/madam." These are far too stuffy and robotic. Instead, start off your response with a simple "Hi" or Hello.
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A simple greeting like, 'Season's Greetings,' or 'Happy Holidays," is appropriate, followed by, 'I hope the season is treating you well. I wanted to thank you for your business this year and wish you and your team a Happy New Year. ' A sign-off of, 'Regards' or 'Best wishes,' is inclusive and business-friendly. What's a good out of office message?
Website: https://www.weavehelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060999791-Listening-to-Voicemail-Messages
Not an OOO issue but the comment about PTSD from OldJob reminded me of this. I am a recreational sailor who often made longer offshore trips as my vacation. OldBoss INSISTED that we provide contact instructions. Mine was some variant of “Dial O and ask for the Marine Operator. Give them [name of boat], [call sign] and [approximate location by date] along with your name and credit card number. We will be monitoring Channel 16 at these times…..” Never got a call. Word spread and there was a sudden epidemic of sailing vacations in my office!
This is one reason I rarely give a contact person. My company is terrible at communication, and not only could you easily be sent on a OOO chain, you could also be emailing someone who is out who didn’t even use OOO.
› Url: https://medium.com/@DianaUrban/how-to-write-the-perfect-out-of-office-auto-responder-email-792987ce8b5c Go Now
Our office will remain closed from [date] to [date] for the New Year celebrations. We assure you that all your emails will be responded as soon as we are back to the office. Happy New Year!
Q. Will Supply Chain, Purchasing, Receiving, Mail Services and other such departments be open during winter break?
Dear Customer, Our office is closed and you can expect to hear back from me by [date]. Have a great holiday! Regards [Name/signature]
I took two weeks off recently and put together a google doc of anticipated things someone might need to know. I slacked it to our whole team with instructions not to call me unless we’re about to lose $1 million or more (we’re a small office and I wear a lot of hats so lots of small things could have been a problem). IDK if anyone actually read it, but it set a tone of “don’t think you can reach me for the next 2 weeks” and let me keep a short OOO response.
Some people keep theirs quite corporate and formal, adopting a to-the-point notification, i.e.:
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.
This is so funny to be because I would chuckle getting those! You have personal context which is how you know that there is an aggeressive/accusatory tone….but without that context I would interpret these as boundaried and light-hearted. (With the exception of the ‘momtears’ one, that would feel overly personal to me.)
That’s so weird! Email is the correct way to reach a teleworking person, that’s the worst place for an OOO message. Stick an OOO sign on your physical office door, by all means!
Given free rein, I’d absolutely love to tell people that needing me to show them how to do X in Excel is actually not a vacation-interrupting emergency and there are tons of free videos that would explain that, if they did not want to contact the actual departments who handle tech support and training. Or that this project they’ve known about for a month but decided to keep under their hat until it became an emergency is something they’ll need to resolve themselves. But that would not fly at all.
I had a manager who did exactly that for his paternity leave. I was floored, because I never thought it was an option. His attitude was that if it was important enough, the person would send it again.