One thing that happens when you regularly send a newsletter out to tens of thousands of people is that you see a lot of automatic Out Of Office (OOO) email responses. The most common one I receive goes something like this: Hi, I’m out of the office until __ and may be slow to respond to email. If it’s an emergency, you can reach me at __ or please contact __. Thanks!
IDK, I try to change my OOO if I’m out for a day. It might not be completely necessary, but I’d rather inform people, and it doesn’t happen often enough to be annoying for me.
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Oh my gosh, this is funny! It does sound kinda like, “some things are more important than work, JAN.”
Thank you for calling [Company Name]. To celebrate the holiday season, we are offering limited-time discounts on all purchases. Please ask your account representative about them today! To place an order, press 1. To follow up on an existing order, press 2. To speak with a representative about our products, press 3. If you have a billing question, press 4. To repeat the menu options, please press the * key. 9. Holiday Closures
Mine tend towards the latter for both internal and external and only get a little more expository if it’s a closedown period and I’m adding leave to one end of it, but that’s a simple “The organisation is shut between X and Y. For emergencies during this time please contact Team. I am on leave between Z and B and will not be accessing my email during this time. Please contact Email Address if your enquiry is urgent otherwise I will attend to your email as soon as is practicable upon my return.”
It’s also expected that if you’re in Wales you put the effort in to at least try and read Welsh, but tbh I can barely read English before 10am.
If I’m out for three months, *someone* is doing each bit of my job in that time. Me coming back and wading through three months of emails where the majority of them will involve someone seeing the OOO and promptly emailing my cover instead, and trying to track down which ones did that and cc-ed me, which ones did that and *didn’t* cc me, and which ones fell off is just a terrible use of getting-back-up-to-speed time.
Also known as "autoresponder emails," out-of-office messages run the gamut. From funny, to clever, to snarky, this message can both show your personality and let senders know that, well, you’re out of office.
Hello and thank you for calling, [Company Name], where [state your short company slogan]. If you know the extension of the party you are trying to reach, you may dial it at any time. To speak with a Sales representative, press 1. To reach a Customer Support agent, press 2. To reach our Billing department, press 3. If you would like to know our regular business hours and location, press 4. If you would like to speak with an Operator, press 0, or press 9 to repeat the available options. 2. Basic Customer Inquiry
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 [contact name] at [contact email] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out.
Unfortunately I didn’t save it, but I once received of office reply that included a synopsis of the “comedic novel” they were working on during their time off.
Dear Customer, Our office will be closed from [date] until [date] and close again for December and January to welcome the New Year. We wish you the warmest holiday. Regards, [Company name]
To set an automatic reply for contacts outside your company, select Outside My Organization > Auto-reply to people outside my organization, type in a message, and select OK.
It was just this colleague – it (thankfully) wasn’t the culture of the office, and I never saw anyone else abuse the OOO like this.
In this post, I’ll go over what an OOO message is and share some of the best examples I’ve found on Google, as well as a few from my coworkers).
If your request is urgent, there’s no use sitting idly in my inbox. So, please send your request to [contact name] at [contact email].
Hello! Please note: [date] through [date] are holiday days for our employees. Our office will be closed and because of this there will likely be a delay in responding to your email until [date] when most of our team returns.