We have our top 10 list of out of office replies—and because we like to max out on fun times, we have an Out of Office Mad Libs activity you can try. Use it for yourself, pass away a slow afternoon with colleagues, or share it with clients headed out of town who would also enjoy it. Out of offices are here to help, after all.
My department still doesn’t allow us to send OOO auto-replies to external recipients because of one incident years ago (a customer tried to contact a sales rep about an urgent order, got the rep’s auto-reply, and in their ensuing panic, somehow got escalated all the way up to the company president). Any external emails we get are auto-forwarded to a centralized mailbox and (ostensibly) handled by another rep while we are out. It bothers me to know that my external contacts won’t get a reponse from me while I’m out and may think I’m just ignoring them.
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The attendant menu for your main contact number may be the first form of contact that a customer has with your business. Make sure your greeting is clearly articulated. Provide an option to speak with an operator if the caller has a question that is not addressed by the menu options.
In my much, MUCH younger days, I printed out a photo of a cruise ship with an arrow and “I am here” pasted on it and taped it to my monitor…
I think I started following that Tiktok account after this video and, if I recall correctly, the OOO writer is an SVP who is trying to reset a company culture that has very little work/life balance. I always liked it, but that background info made me love it that much more.
I follow this TikTok account and she has a TON of these. I think it’s a culture thing. It would be inappropriate in many places but clearly it isn’t there.
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.
When you’re out for the holidays, how can you express your thrill for the season without sounding, well, cheesy?
How about warning people of what’s to come? Take a look at an example you can use below.
AH #2 – Closed with Voicemail. Thank you for calling Business Name. We are currently closed for the Christmas Break and will be reopening for business as usual on Time and Date. If you would like to leave a message, please do so after the tone including your Name and a Contact number and we will be in touch when we reopen.
Nowadays, all working professionals are on LinkedIn. It is one of the best ways to network with coworkers, potential employees, customers, and business contacts. As a ...
“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.”
“I will be away on a vacation from June 3 to June 14. For urgent queries, you can call [person] at [phone number].”
Unfortunately, literally every single thing in the world is an emergency in my office :(
I do typically come back to hundreds of emails, and I prioritize what to read – things from my boss/leadership are first, followed by communication from my direct reports. I also sort them by conversation thread and read the end of them first, which reduces the burden.
Automated reply messages are a great way for businesses to fulfill customer support expectations of receiving a prompt response for their chat or email requests. Automated reply messages empower businesses to:
It definitely sounds like something my boss would write and I laughed at it. In our work, everyone thinks that they’re a special emergency all the time. Stopping to think “if I don’t have this in the next two days what will the actual consequences be” is a thing that should happen more but doesn’t.