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 ...
This is [NAME’s] bot. [NAME] is indisposed and unable to respond to your email. I’m replying to let you know that she will return to her desk on [DATE]. It is her intent to attend to your request promptly at that time. Meanwhile, [NAME] leaves you with the following message.Please ponder its significance: “I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.” — [NAME]
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Admittedly the several people I know who do this are also very lazy so I may be reading into tone? Because it definitely was going to be whenever it was going to be convenient for them, not so much for the business.
“I am spending time with family today – some things are MORE important than work.”
Ugh, I wouldn’t mind changing daily if I could have a couple of prepared responses for normal circumstances (i.e.: “I’ve left for the day, but I’ll be back in the office tomorrow morning to return your call”) to select from, but having to create a new message for Tuesday night when the info for Monday night is the same? Rage inducing. Email is asynchronous, you KNOW you’re not going to get an instant reply and sometimes you email knowing fully well that it won’t be seen until the next morning/week/whatever. Why on earth mandate an auto-reply for that?
I was always a little bit skittish about OOO’s in the pre-smartphone days. I don’t like the idea of announcing to the world that my house is going to be unoccupied all week.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently on holiday with my family for the first time in what seems like forever. For urgent matters, [NAME] will help you. She doesn’t have a cape, but she is basically Superwoman. See you real soon. (Source: Futureofworking.com)
Was required to do this at my last job and our script was to say “I’m working from home today. If you need to reach me urgently, call me at (personal/home/cell number).”
I’ve never had a funny / pithy OOO. Clearly I’m missing out! It’s literally, “Hi, I’m OOO from x to x, and will be returning x. Please contact Fergus if you need immediate assistance.” Maybe I should live a little!
For many roles, of course, the sort of OoO described wouldn’t work. But there are a lot of roles where people would survive just fine letting their requests sit for an extra week before forwarding again. And especially at smaller companies where there they might be pressed for coverage when people are out, I think it’s great to normalise that a job is basically ‘off-line’ for a week or two so that the employee can rest and recharge.
Our office VM sends an audio file to our email. I love it, because I can apply all the filing and prioritization functions of my email inbox to the voice messages. It’s the only way I ever check my VM. I don’t even remember how to listen to messages on my phone.
An automatic response should include the date when you left, a reason (vacation, sick leave, a conference, etc) and, if possible, the date when you plan to come back. Thank your client for their email, promise to get back to it as soon as possible and apologize for the inconvenience. Also, it should be obvious that you’re out of office from the first sentence.
I pretty consistently just do “Greetings, I will be out of office from (date) to (date) with (limited/no) access to email. If you need assistance, please contact (boss) at (email address) – otherwise, I will follow up with you upon my return. Thanks!”
If you have a main email that customers use, set the email out of office message to reflect when you will return and if it is an emergency who they can reach.
A relatively unprofessional one — like mine, for instance — does the opposite: It encourages prospects, recruiters, and potential connections to run in the other direction.
I just say that I’m out of the office. Practically, it makes no difference where this office is located.
Website: https://news.mit.edu/2013/away-for-the-holidays-before-you-go-set-your-email-and-mitvoip-phone-auto-replies