It takes careful preparation to prepare your office before you close for the holidays. Proper messaging will ensure that you can plan around the shutdown for your customers, vendors, and employees, and that means you won’t have to deal with a lot of angry complaints before and after the break. That should make for a carefree holiday and well-deserved relaxation. Below are 65 of the best office closed for holiday messages for your customers & clients.
At my old job, you used to nominate a contact for when you were out of the office and there wasn’t an obvious person to contact. One department was so small that they all just put the all team email so they never had to change it. Trouble is, it turns out Outlook team emails by default only accept internal messages :X
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Such emails are crucial, especially when you have long-lasting relationships with customers that need a prompt response. It would be very unprofessional to leave without explaining why you aren’t answering. It’s like if you are having a conversation with someone, you decide to just take off without saying goodbye, while they went to the bathroom. Rude!
But really, I think people who know you WFH will get your meaning and people who don’t know you WFH won’t care or feel misled if they find out you really work from home.
When we have people go on maternity leave we normally arrange with them for mail to be forwarded directly to the person covering their leave, (but I’m in the UK so normally they will be out for 6-12 months)
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You need to let colleagues, clients, and prospects know that you won’t be available, while ensuring that they know the best course of action to take while you’re away.
I worked at an office where we used OOO messages on voicemail pretty regularly and if we forgot to change the message, our callers were quick to tell us the outgoing message was outdated. That end date feature would have been a big help for us! A local council in Wales needed to get a road sign translated into Welsh. (All official signs in Wales have to be in both English and Welsh.) They got an out of office message in Welsh from the translator they contacted, assumed that was the translation and printed the out of office message on the sign. They didn’t realise their mistake till a Welsh speaker pointed it out…
I like funny OOO – but I am a bad offender regarding these and may slightly overshare. I recently had to be in and out for eye surgery and this was mine:
4. Sample Email Reply for Vacations with Phone Number. [Your Greeting] Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office, and I do not have email access.
Listen, who doesn’t love a little furry animal friend? If you want to put a smile on your colleague’s face then why not include a cute little GIF or photograph of some adorable animals. Go on, brighten their day.
An out of office message is basically a quality of life feature both for you and your business contacts. By warning your clients that you won’t be able to reply to their message right away you save the time they might have wasted on follow ups. You also won’t lose prospects who might’ve believed that you’re ignoring their request otherwise.
If you don't see the Automatic Replies button, follow the steps to use rules to send an out of office message. Set up an automatic reply
Most of what I’m describing (as well as boyd) boils down to examples of clear, honest, communication. While it sounds simple, such openness is extremely rare in the workplace. It is rare because, especially with time off, this type of communication requires the sender to be vulnerable, to cede control, and/or to be assertive and frank about one’s needs.
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It’s very likely that you’ll set up an auto-reply message while you’re at a conference or any other business event. What’s more, some of your prospects will be there as well, so you should use an opportunity like that to meet them in person and strengthen that relationship.
I’d be happier getting this than one of the out-of-office messages that provides waayyy too much detail — “I’m at home nursing an unhappy stomach, hope to be in tomorrow, but meanwhile am resting and checking email in between bathroom runs,” etc.