This is one reason I rarely give a contact person. My company is terrible at communication, and not only could you easily be sent on a OOO chain, you could also be emailing someone who is out who didn’t even use OOO.
Out-Of-Office templates (OOO) are a type of auto-responder that instruct eDesk to reply automatically to messages that arrive during one-off office closures, e.g., during a national holiday. For example, a customer sends your company a message on Christmas Day, but the office closed at 6pm on Christmas Eve and will not reopen until the 29th December. If you have set up an OOO template for this holiday period, eDesk will immediately respond to the customer with a message that reads : "Thanks for contacting Joe's Bikes! Just to confirm that we've received your message and that a member of our team will respond as soon as possible. Wishing you a very Happy Holiday from everybody at Joe's Bikes". This message is pre-written as an OOO template and is set up to be triggered for any customer messages that arrive between 6pm on 24th December and 8am on 29th December. You can use OOO templates to auto-respond to messages during any one-off time period when your team is unavailable to respond in person. Setting up OOO templates is easy - we'll show you how! Note: To access this tour you must be an Admin or have permission to access Templates. To find out more about this, click here.
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If you’re traveling to a remote, mountainous area, why not jab some fun at your lack of WiFi in your autoresponder? Plus, that makes it less likely that people will expect an immediate response or continue to email you after the first try.
6. Simple Automatic Email Reply Example. [Your Greeting] I will be away from (Date of Leave) until (Date of Return). For all urgent matters, you can contact
My boss requires us to put a nightly OOO message up, and I HATE it. I pushed back on it for months at first, because people know and understand that the reason no one is responding at 8pm is because the business is closed (or at least, they should understand that…). It wasn’t worth the fight, my boss thinks it’s so important, so I caved and just turn on the message every night. I think it makes us look immature and like we don’t understand business norms, but it’s not the hill I’m willing to die on.
I had a manager who did exactly that for his paternity leave. I was floored, because I never thought it was an option. His attitude was that if it was important enough, the person would send it again.
Want some sample business voicemail messages? Below are 21 pre-recorded business voicemail greeting examples to get you started. You’ll find voicemail examples for your business’s main phone number, your direct business line, your after-hours (or non-business hours) voicemail, some holiday-specific greetings, and your customer service line.
I forgot I did that and it was pointed out by a recruiter who was trying to reach me to schedule a phone screen. Whoops, haha.
Another (also memorialized via a TikTok) is not exactly an OOO responder but it’s a great example of unapologetic bluntness. “Baby, I’m not even here,” the woman in the says while preparing a margarita and talking about not responding to calls or emails during approved time off. “PTO? Prepare The Others. I’m a ghost.”
Thank you for your email. I’m away from my desk until [return date] trying to corral my kids between family visits and holiday sugar highs.
'I’m away from my desk at the moment but will respond the moment they give me a desk' (Credit: Getty Images)
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While the above is almost certainly a dramatisation, getting your out-of-office message right over the holiday period is arguably as important as all other facets of business. Cashflow? Investments? Who needs ’em when you’ve got an auto-response that’ll make people chortle!
Amanda works at HubSpot, and she came with a unique auto respondent that asked her contacts to guess where she is. To give background, she flew down to Boston to attend a Red Sox training game in the spring with her father. She chose to ask her contacts whether where they think she might be, and also this played some wonderful use of litotes here:
I set my OoO for individual public holidays, because I know they’re not global, and I get emails from lots of different countries.
With that in mind, we’ve put together five simple examples of what your out-of-office message could look like, from the wild and wacky to the simple and fact-y. And if you’re not sure about the logistics of actually setting your auto-responder, here’s a quick guide on how to do that.
The one from “Central Intelligence” with the Rock that I love is is (paraphrasing) :