Providing estimated time to customers for getting responses is the first and foremost best practice to be followed by businesses. Usually, when customers know what the wait duration is, they are not very frustrated. Hence, setting clear expectations is crucial for delivering excellent service.
Give them the dates. 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.
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I’ll be back at my desk on [date] and will respond to your message immediately. In case you need urgent assistance, please forward an email to [contact name] at [contact email] so that Santa’s little helpers at our shop may look into it.
I have a message saying I don’t listen to voice mail, because I only see that a message has been left after several days. No idea why the lag, it’s been the same despite going through two phones and two operators. There are always other ways to contact me. Last time I got voicemail it was the police, the officer was calling from a landline so he couldn’t text. Luckily it wasn’t urgent (he needed a witness statement, but I hadn’t witnessed anything of interest to the court).
If your query is urgent you can contact my colleague, Rachael Farley, on [email protected] or call our office on 01325 778 786.
I am in [COUNTRY] [DATE] to [DATE] so email replies may be tardy due to the curvature of the earth and the sun. Thank you.
Regardless of my general health and hygiene over the silly season, I’ll be back in the office on January 2. 15. “Thank you for your consideration during this festive or not-festive time.”
But what should you do to keep the message informative, engaged and maybe a little festive?
To ensure that you keep customers happy and present a professional image, make your auto-attendant easy to navigate. We’ve compiled some sample call center greeting scripts that can be used in different situations, whether your company has a small customer support team or a massive call center with hundreds of people.
My boss had this problem (outdated message), but it wasn’t his fault. No matter how many times he changed it, it kept reverting to the original message and dates. Even IT couldn’t figure it out.
Doesn’t work when phone is off or out of range, does it? I’m a small business owner but I am often driving in out of range areas and will be traveling for a week with no signal most of the time. Considering leaving my phone plugged in at home just so it can send the auto replies. Still no fix though for the hours spent outside sms land every week.
I also do not have an OOO for external people – only internal. I always monitor my email enough to be able to forward important external emails to the right person to handle. IDK why, I just don’t like them having the burden of emailing someone else if I’m out. I’d rather my employee contact them and say “Hey, DataQueen let me know you were having an issue and asked me to connect with you.” My last CEO was out for a full year and almost none of our clients knew (we weren’t trying to hide it, it was just not pertinent to them).
The good news is, automating text messages is as simple to set up as a pre-recorded voicemail prompt or an out of office email reply. We’ll show you how it’s done and share some ideas for how you can leverage the power of automation.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently on holiday with my family for the first time in what seems like forever. For urgent matters, [NAME] will help you. She doesn’t have a cape, but she is basically Superwoman. See you real soon.
In a role where I got many OoO replies, I actually loved this. (And wrote back in said language. And got a reply!)
For some telephone systems, your technology partner will need to manage your “holiday” schedule.
We sent a message from the Android phone to the iPhone number that has already been set in vacation settings. And finally, we received an auto-reply text from iPhone to the Android phone.