I work for a hospital, in a role unrelated to patient care. My first out of the office message was just my name and department. After a series of increasingly plaintive messages one evening, I added, “If you are calling about patient care, you have the wrong number.”
Hello and thanks for your email. I’m currently out of the office until [MM/DD] with limited / no access to email. If your request is urgent, please contact [NAME] at [EMAIL or PHONE]. In the meantime, did you know we have a weekly / monthly enewsletter?
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The recipient may have filtering turned on that would reject the automatic reply;
Others like to take the opportunity to inject a little personality and make the reader smile, like our very own Rachael’s summertime out-of-office:
A. Administrative offices will be closed; however, designated individuals will be on call to respond in the event that an urgent matter arises.
Auto-attendants with a customized holiday greeting can be a festive way to mark the occasion. If you have a retail business, create a holiday greeting to inform customers of any limited-time sales you are offering. If your office is closed for the holiday, be sure you state this in your message.
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If your request is urgent, don’t sit around. Send your request to [contact’s name] at [contact’s email].
Completely agree. I have also recently have seen multiple out of office messages that say something along the lines of, “Please be aware that I may be slow to respond to emails today.” If it’s that time-sensitive, why is it an email? Asynchronous communication tools shouldn’t be smashed into the roles of real-time ones, and vice versa.
In this email, you’re a UPS package getting delivered to your vacation destination. Ah, I wish UPS offered this service.
I had a colleague that managed to set up a rule for an OOO that would only get sent if you cc’d or bcc’d him, which basically said that all those cc mails would get automatically put in a separate folder and he may or may not ever read them – may the odds be ever in your favor basically.
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.”
7. Out of Office for a Family Vacation. This is a great template to use if you’re on a family vacation. Hey (specify the Name field id), Thanks for your email.
There’s nothing worse than dreading a return from being away from the desk. After all, you’re likely to have an overflowing email inbox left untended while you were on vacation. Sending out this one email before you go anywhere for an extended period of time will help lessen that feeling.
On the Inside My Organization tab, type the response that you want to send to teammates or colleagues while you are out of the office.
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If you need immediate assistance during my absence, please contact (Contact Person with email and phone). Upon my return, I will reply to your emails in a timely manner.