A client rings to tell you your out-of-office message has a typo in it, or, worse, is mind-numbingly boring. Suddenly you’re wrenched out of holiday mode and back into the throes of work, weeping as you log back into your email server to change your response as your shandy grows warm and flat.
Come Christmas time, there’s nothing quite like tidying up your desk, shamefully closing your 50 Chrome tabs, and switching on your out-of-office responder for the holidays.
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The kicker was when she left we teased apart all of what she had been doing and it amounted to about 10 hours a week worth of work (and she was putting in OT constantly lol)
Have you sent a proper farewell email to the whole office, thanking everyone and wishing them well?
Sometimes teams need the extra nudge to disconnect...here are our tips for getting your team to unplug from email over the holidays.
Including even a passing reference stating that your customer’s email is important to you shows your appreciation for the message that you are currently unable to respond to.
Written by Braden Becker @BradenBecker
When crafting an out-of-office reply, keep in mind that you must provide sufficient detail so that recipients understand exactly when you’ll not be able to respond.
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office for the holidays and will be back on [date]. During this period I will have limited access to my email. If you need to contact me, I can be reached on [number, another email, mailing address], otherwise, I will respond to your email on my return.
Use a voicemail with the capability to record several different messages. Excellent customer service takes a little extra work. The good news is, once you get your messages recorded, they are set. You may need to change your holiday greeting message to fit the season, but all of the others will be okay. Write your scripts before you record!
I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
That’s the way ours is set up, so anyone who was emailing that guy at the time would have seen it.
Use the time away with no employees working to restart equipment such as computers, laptops, etc. Restarts are necessary to keep updates installed and the machines running smoothly.
Ha! Maybe she was short-circuiting someone who would send an email and then come over to her desk 5 minutes later to “see if you got my email.”
If you're unsure of what exactly to write in your message, a good idea is to search through your inbox for out of office messages you have previously received from other people. From these messages, you'll have a good idea of the kind of tone and messaging that professionals use for these automatic replies.
Let’s be real, the majority of the thousands of emails you return to after being O.O.O. will be spam and salesy marketing drivel – any legitimately important emails will probably get lost! Unless you’re Barack Obama, just send it when they’re back.
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