Head over to your vacation message template, and Hit Control + C to paste your signature into your out of office notification. This way, when someone contacts you while you’re on vacay, they can still:
Image Source: https://onepoint21jigawatts.tumblr.com/post/61059236581/day-1-favorite-movie-field-of-dreams-1989
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Season’s Greetings! It’s my favorite time of year, which means I’m currently out of the office chugging mugs of cocoa, stuffing my face with cookies, and attempting to fulfill my life-long goal of memorizing every single line of [FAVORITE HOLIDAY MOVIE]. I’ll be back in front of my computer on [DATE] and will respond to your message at that time. If you need immediate assistance, please send an email to [NAME] at [EMAIL] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out. Happy ho-ho-holidays!
I just want short and sweet. Mine says, “I will be out of the office until X Date. If you need assistance before then, please contact my department at [email protected] or (000)000-0000. I will reply to messages when I return.”
Oh heavens no. All I ask of an out of office is that it tells me when the person will be back (if known) and who I can contact in the interim.
And while we all have grace for friends and family who seem to take forever to get back to our messages, customers generally expect this degree of promptness when they text a business.
Automated text messages can not only serve as response placeholders until you’re back in the office, but they can also be: A first line of contact for customer service inquiries A lead generation toolA promotional channel for your contentAnd so much more!
They happen when you have at least two auto-reply systems set to respond to every single email that somehow start messaging each other.
I saw a version of this on IG that was an old school (paper) OOO from an associate pastor. It has a line like “if this is an emergency and you must speak to someone, Jesus is always available on the mainline.” Too funny.
We do it every time we go on vacation or take a sick day. We put up an out-of-office (OOO) message with the date of our return, a colleague’s contact information for urgent needs, and maybe even some details about the destination of our long-awaited vacation.
Ha – I didn’t watch the video but still definitely get the condescension! It’s a LOT of extra explaining and direction when something like, “if you need immediate assistance, please contact Fergus at…” will do. In my opinion, cutesy stuff like this is mildly entertaining at the beginning but gets dumb/annoying shortly thereafter. Not just with OOO messages, but other instances where companies try to make being “cool/funny/laid back” parts of their brand in really obvious ways.
When I started at my old job, they gave me a phone number in the directory but forgot to actually issue me a phone for several years! It was great.
You must pay close attention to signs of negative language or tendencies to sound monotonous. Instead, you can use simple, everyday vocabulary to convey your message.
Right, Outlook has that auto-display of OOO messages, so at least I know so-and-so won’t be seeing it for days and I either adjust expectations accordingly or I just email someone else.
Like the previous examples, the message doesn’t have to be lengthy – you just need to let people know the details, and who they should be contacting in your absence.