Two to three sentences is usually enough to tell recipients everything they need to know.
When you share transparent business information and provide alternative ways when the relevant channel is not available, it delivers a delightful service experience.
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Hi, and thanks for writing! I’m out of the office with no access to email until [DATE]. If your request is urgent, you can contact [EMAIL] for assistance. Otherwise, I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible when I return. While you wait, why not subscribe to our fantastic newsletter? You’ll get actionable tips once per week geared toward helping you grow your online business. Join us here [link].
Please note: Shipment cutoff times on December 22nd will be at 2pm MST. Regular shipment schedules will continue on Tuesday, December 27th.
Thanks for your email. I’m currently attending [insert event, conference etc here], and will return on [date of return].
What makes this a decent example of an OOO message is that it’s candid, (hopefully) honest, and blunt. There’s no guessing whether or not this dude is going to respond to your email this week. Also, it gives us a bit of an insight into his life right now, which helps communication in the moment and in the future. He’s burned out. Even if you did manage to reach him, it’s likely he’d be resentful, even if he didn’t say so. There’s a good chance the sender of the original email will identify with this and respect his time.
With an out of office email, you provide the following information, preferably in a unique way: At the moment, you are not available;The exact time (date) of your return;Contact information (phone number) for urgent cases;Contact information of colleagues to be contacted in your absence;
1. Add your office closing dates to your email signature block a month in advance. Highlight it to make sure it stands out as your regular clients/customers probably don’t even look at your email signature anymore. 2. Add your office closing dates to your November/December invoices. Most clients/customers will thoroughly read an invoice to
I can see why you’d have a negative reaction to it–that’s how I felt the first several times I heard about these kinds of emails–but I don’t think it’s actually rude (unless they’re saying “if I get emails from Ali G, I’m deleting them”). The wording of the email can be rude, but the general concept of this kind of email isn’t.
I’ve seen similar things with OOO messages where people would update them practically daily. “I’ll be away from my desk from 9-2 with intermittent emails and then on a call from 3:-3:45” and ….dude. We don’t need that much detail every day.
The weather has changed, so I have decided to book myself a little break in the sunshine.
Hello, this is Michael Smith from ABA English. Sorry I missed you. If you have a question about our products, please contact [email protected]. I will follow up once at home. Kind regards.
If the person keeps you on the message thread in which they then contact someone else (ideally, the person you stated in your out of office message as the one who’s handling urgent issues in your absence), you are literally kept in the loop and can see for yourself that all was handled when you get back. Of course, this works even better if you check the most recent items in your inbox first when you get back.
You crossed everything off your to-do list and cleared out your inbox. There’s one last thing for you to do: Write and activate the out-of-office message on your email.
"[Auto-attendants] assist a business of any size in presenting a more organized, efficient, and, if necessary, more robust picture of itself,” points out Brandi Armstrong, Co-Founder of Telecentrex and blogger on evancarmichael.com. The right greeting can make the difference between a frustrated customer or a satisfied one.
I just say “following my return to the office” because saying “as soon as possible” isn’t actually when I’m going to respond — I may have other priorities when I get back that take precedence over responding to a week old email that wasn’t important enough for them to contact my backup. That said, it doesn’t bother me when other people do it!
Yup, that’s what I meant. Hearing or reading”Happy Halloween!!” in June is annoying.