Go a long way to set up an out of office message in a plain and funny way. Use a little humor to build the rappo with the clients and develop the relationship between the customers and employees and direct the eyes of the clients.
Hi, You just missed me. I am out of the office until [MM/DD]. If your question can wait, great. I’ll reply when I get back. If not, contact [name] at [email] or [phone] and they’ll take good care of you. Meanwhile, feel free to peruse our FAQ section of [website] to see if your question can’t be answered there.
.
I don’t know what to say these days – I’m still working from home so “out of the office” doesn’t sound right any more, but ‘off work’ seems like too much? I’m probably way overthinking it but I’ve felt stuck every time I need to write one lately.
As long as you’ve covered the basics—dates of your absence and who to contact in your absence—you should be good to go.
I’m with you. It comes across as a bit scold-y, like chastising someone for emailing while you’re out and treating them as if their issues aren’t important.
My OOO replies are relatively boring…usually state if I’m using PTO or at a conference, dates, who to bother in my place, etc.
I worked in a call center for Big-Evil-Bank for five years, and every new manager would have a different OOO policy/pet peeve that they would require phone-miners to follow. In particular, the memory of the six month period where we were forced to put an OOO up if we left our desk for so much as ONE HOUR smacked me in the face when I saw question. That was by far the worst/strangest/most tedious OOO policy I have ever been forced to follow.
Did you email me about [SERVICE]? Great! Read what our customers are saying about how awesome their experience has been. [LINK TO TESTIMONIALS]. Best Regards.
You are hereby informed that a large number of our company workers are going to take their days off due to extreme weather conditions prevailing in the city. Due to this, there would be much difficulty in coming and going so it is a mutual decision from the heads of our office to make it closed from 25-12-20XX to 02-01-20XX. This temporary closure will result in delayed answers to your queries, so these will be answered right after the opening of our office. All the delays are regretted.
Click on Preferences from the pop-up menu and click on the Vacation tab to continue. On the vacation tab, you have the option to set your vacation period and the automatic response.
I thought it was funny but could never get away with using something like that at my org. I loved the “competent people who work for me” part – I make this joke all the time. We have some people who feel that they should have a manager personally attend to them and, at least in my case, my highly competent team is in the weeds of that work a lot more and are not rusty (like I am).
Coworkers, clients, and subscribers typically expect fast responses and solutions to their problems, particularly from people working in customer service, marketing, and communications jobs. Out of office messages provide them with a polite, concise, and professional explanation of why you cannot respond right away. You can provide an OOO message if you are gone for one day, one week, or several months.
An out of office message is important because it let's you keep people informed and tells them how to proceed in your absence. The Out of Office message for Social Media is cool. I can really include this on my Chat Bot now. Thanks for sharing it Christin.
So, take a lesson from @courtwhip, editor at PEDESTRIAN.TV, who wrote the above hilarious out-of-office email, fully stocked with mentions of the best movies from the 1990s. (By the way, “Splinter” is from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and as we all know, he loves pizza.)
As more people are vaccinated and free to live a more normal life again, vacation plans, trip pictures and conference hashtags will flood social media sites. Phone calls and emails to colleagues will be met with out of office (OOO) messages. You might feel happy for that person, or maybe a little jealous that they are getting away. You should also feel concerned for their security well-being.
“You have reached [Sandy and Bill’s] voice mail. Please leave your message after the beep so we can call you back if we want to.”
We also had company wide announcements that all of Spain was going on holiday in July, and then France would be gone on August, so please wrap up any business for the summer before then :’)