Seriously, literally, anything but a voicemail. I’d take “sharpie on a dirty napkin delivered by carrier pigeon to my island vacation” over voicemails. I can’t flag voicemails for later. And also, we have this cool new feature where you can see missed calls. I do not need a voicemail just saying “Hey its Bob, call me back.”
Make sure that when you set your vacation email, you’re giving clients or prospects the information – and the peace of mind – they need. You don’t want them to wonder why they aren’t getting a response, or who they should contact in your absence, and how. And that’s all any vacation email really needs.
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She continues: “However, there should be a way for whoever is emailing you to have an urgent request handled, and that should be included as part of your OOO as well as being known to your work team (supervisor and colleagues). That might look like including a coworker's email on your OOO or it might simply involve setting a forwarding rule for while you're away, so that your email goes to the colleague who's covering.”
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To set an automatic reply for contacts outside your company, select Outside My Organization > Auto-reply to people outside my organization, type in a message, and select OK.
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.
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I’m with you on this one. Management has access to a mansion and a townhouse in two different fabulous vacation destinations and it burns my butt every time I see an out of office from one of them (98% white men) going on about how they’ll be enjoying this perk. In the meantime, a few years back we had to eliminate free coffee at the offices because business was not good enough (it was eventually brought back after company president realized after a year that people were really pissed).
Hello! I am off for the weak on the beach, convincing myself that science is right when it says shark attacks are rare. I’ll be shore to get back to you, but your email may get swallowed by my inbox – or, you know, sharks. Please add all finished lists on the board as you would regularly and see [NAME] if you have any questions. If its pressing, send to [EMAIL]. If it’s not, and you’re just bored, here are some facts you might find interesting: ___
“Hi, Thank you for contacting me. I’m currently out of the office for a conference and will not be available until [date]. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
A thing my employer does is when someone leaves, they just shutoff the email. So someone goes to the trouble of writing an out of office explaining that they have retired or accepted a job somewhere else and where someone can go for help and IT just nukes the email address 24 hours after the person leaves. Then whomever was contacting them has no idea where to turn next. It is a terrible policy.
I think this makes a lot of sense for a 2-3 month absence, when there wouldn’t be much point in reading and responding to things when you get back. Questions will have been answered and issues resolved by different means.
Hello, this is Michael Smith from ABA English. Sorry I missed you. If you have a question about our products, please contact [email protected]. I will follow up once at home. Kind regards.
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I guess my first instinct might be thinking it’s rude but having seen it a few times I do get it. It really makes sense for people who get dozens or hundreds of emails a day and are gone for extended periods of time. It’s more courteous to be up front about it than silently delete like some people said they do (though I get they maybe just didn’t realize they’d need to do that).
Does your company publish blogs or offer downloadable ebooks, reports, or case studies? If so, add a P.S. to the end of your vacation message linking your readers to some content they can learn from or engage with.