Thank you for your email. I’m currently out of the office until [date] to celebrate the holiday with my loved ones—without my phone in front of my face.
At my old job we had a short script for our voice mail messages including whether we were in the office or out of the office. We were specifically told not to say why we were out of the office for personal privacy and protection reasons. However, an exception was soon made–for jury duty. Callers were getting freaked out when they got the message “I’m out of the office and don’t know when I will return.” They would be worried about the person they were calling and worried about whether or not they would be able to get the info they needed. So if on jury duty we would say, “I’m out of the office on jury duty and don’t know when I will return.”
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My old job was like that! It was so, so annoying. I understood requiring us to update our voicemails if we were out of the office that day, but it was just a waste of a few minutes every single morning.
A voicemail greeting can be act as a introduction to your company and set the tone for the rest of your company's relationship with a client so it's important to create a voicemail that suits your company's brand. But if you're not sure where to start, we have a few suggestions you can use to get your voicemail going.
The worst one I ever received was from a coworker (senior to me, but not my manager) many years ago. I’ll paraphrase it as my memory isn’t great:
"I'll be out of the office from Monday, 12/14, and will be back on Monday, 12/21."
“This is MY NAME [from COMPANY] calling about REASON. Call me [by DAY/TIME] at (844) 387-6962 [pause, then repeat the number very slowly] that’s eight four four… three, eight, seven… six, nine, six, two.”
On that same day, President Eisenhower sent a letter to the Honorable Harvey V. Higley, Administrator of Veterans' Affairs (VA), designating him as Chairman of the Veterans Day National Committee.
A. No. Winter break is the shutdown of the University during a time when many activities are generally slow. Because our hospital must operate 24/7 every day of the year, UTMC employees do not have winter break. The same holds true for other essential operations, such as providing safety on all of our campuses.
For any requests you might have, feel free to reach out our [Title] [Name] at [email / phone].
This workaround will take care of auto-reply messages for phone calls and messages to the iPhone. There are a lot of users using iCloud emails on iPhone and Mac. You can set a vacation auto-reply on the iCloud email account. Let’s see how to set automatic vacation messages on iCloud email.
I do find the above quite amusing, but it would never fly at my place of work! lol!
We're talking about engagement here. Do you have a webinar clients can watch in case they miss your face or want to hear your voice? Do you have a special going for new clients or referrals? Do you have a hot new blog post you wrote just before stepping out? Tell your people to click on that!
Rather than sounding like a boring email robot, you could add a funny tone to your letter. Use a GIF or a meme to joke about what you’re doing on vacation, but remember not to go overboard.
I’ll add “with limited access to email and voicemail” if I’m out because of work-related stuff (back when we used to have offsite meetings!), and “with no access to email and voicemail” if I’m truly on PTO.
Out of office messages differ depending on whether you are sending them within or outside the company. The language you use and the information you provide can also depend on the workplace environment. Here are three out of office message examples that illustrate these differences.
Thank you for your email. I’ll be offline through mid-January without access to email. In the interim, please contact Maya Schwartz, a sales and marketing manager here, at mschwartz@abcdefg.com.