I say I’m off-duty, or in non-working status, but I come from a DOD background. I no longer like to say out of the office. Unavailable is good too.
When you’re trying to contact someone on a matter of importance (or even urgency) on one side of the equation and you find out via an autoresponder that they are away for vacation, it can be incredibly frustrating unless they’ve done the front-end work beforehand. (I’m speaking from personal – and recent – experience here. And worse, there was no auto-responder set up. I had to use the – gasp! – telephone to find out what was going on.)
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If you’re anything like I am, you probably fall into team two. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to get creative. But if you plan ahead, you might be able to craft some hilarity.
With these tips, you’ll be able to write your next auto-reply message, for holidays or other reasons.
If you’re out for several days, then sure, say when you’ll be back and leave info for who to contact in the meantime.
For any assistance please raise a ticket and the concerned team will get back to you.
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Over Twitter DMs, one woman sent me her OOO messages from when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The messages — composed while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments and recovering from surgery — were detailed and unique. They offered touches of humor, honesty, details about her treatment schedules and set expectations for others trying to reach her. She offered alternative contact options for potential emailers to make sure urgent requests didn’t fall through the cracks but offered a dose or reality as well. I particularly appreciated this line:
This entails informing your loyal customers about the holiday closure of your business in a clear, informative and (optionally) festive manner. Knowing that holidays can be a busy time of the year, we provide you with several pre-drafted email templates that you can use for announcing the holiday closure for your business.
It’s your last day before the vacation starts, you are rushing through your to-do list and suddenly you realize- I need to write an OOO email!
I have no idea! He was pretty quirky, but in a harmless way. Like, he didn’t expect other people to spend that kind of time on their VM greetings, and he took our good-natured ribbing about his unusual habits in stride.
4. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. 5. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I …
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Don’t let my absence keep you from missing out on the latest updates. Follow us on *Facebook / *Twitter/ *LinkedIn / *Instagram. You will love our GIFs on Twitter, trust me.
Incorporating visuals or GIF images to automated reply messages, you have a greater chance of customers reading your emails and completing the desired call-to-action (CTA).Including visuals or GIF images to the automated email messages makes it interesting and appealing to the recipients. Visuals enhance the description of your messages sent to your customers.6. Personalize your automated messages
I no longer work at this company due to the misalignment with advertised company values and actual practice.
As with a regular cold email, the best way to utilize your out of office message is to offer something of value to your client. So if you’re taking a vacation right after the launch of your newest feature or after finishing up on that huge blog post, linking to them may prove to be a very good idea. Explain why that content is useful and the person who contacted you about their thoughts.