Having a professional automated message when you are busy enough to answer customer queries right away can set the right tone for your business and inform customers when they can expect to receive the response.
In an instant, you feel a weight lifted from your shoulders, and a choir of angels sing Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy around you as you skip out of the office. You gaze upon the masses of workers on the tram, smugly wondering if their out-of-office responses are on yet.
.
One of the only reasons I get voicemails is because our system is set up to send new voicemail messages to your email as an attached file. Now if only it would send the voicemail as a transcript, I’d be set. I don’t mind returning calls, but listening to voicemails is obnoxious, especially because people are really bad at leaving voice messages.
I’m at Growth Marketing Conference – Are You? Bonjour from France! 🇫🇷Happy Holidays! I’m at home with my family.
We also had to reply to any emails we received within 4 hours. Even if we didn’t have an answer.
“It wasn’t a vacation, but I didn’t want to deal with normal business stuff,” he says. “Humor is sticky. People laughed … and they left me alone.”
Automated email messages generate a 70.5% higher open rate and a 152% higher click-through rate than standard marketing messages. Briefing what would be the next step of action gives customers transparent information.
Anybody that might need me that quickly should have access to my calendar and can see I’m in a meeting. Anybody that can’t see my calendar shouldn’t expect a reply in an hour unless I’d said I’d be available or something.
You probably received a number of these emails, and thus you should be familiar with the information out-of-office emails provide.
There are multiple ways to craft your out-of-office message, but there are a couple of standard best practices to follow that will ensure you don’t come back to angry or confused customers, coworkers, or vendors.
When an account is setup as IMAP in Outlook sometimes the folders do not display. To get the... "550 Authentication is Required for Relay" when Sending Email
Ta-da, you are done! You are one step closer to your vacation. Remember, just because you are away, it doesn’t mean you cannot make someone’s day with a funky OOO email!
“Hi, Thank you for contacting me. I’m currently out of the office for a conference and will not be available until [date]. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Some of my coworkers have started putting “Thank you for your email” at the beginning of their out of office replies. Management loves it, but I think it’s too ingratiating and I cringe when I read it. These are junior-level staffers, so maybe it makes sense in that context? Anyway, I refuse to put that in my out of office messages.
I’m four weeks away from going on maternity leave for six months, so I’m in the process of divvying up my clients between colleagues, or finishing off work and closing cases. I will need an OOO for anyone who pops up again having been closed in the past, so this thread has been useful to get me thinking about it!
Be aware of your tone. Keep it clean and simple. Sullivan says: “Even if you work in a casual office environment, the people emailing you may not. It's fine to have a light tone in your communications, especially when you're in an email conversation with someone directly, but your OOO is more of a blast message—including a cat meme or silly quote could backfire if your OOO goes to, say, a new client prospect or the sales director at a company you've been trying to engage.”
I worked with a guy years ago who would update his voicemail greeting literally every time he left the office. So the bare minimum would be that he’d record a new message when he arrived in the office in the morning. Then, when leaving for lunch he’d record a new greeting listing the time he would be back in the office, then he’d record a new message when he got back from lunch, then a new one at the end of the day saying he would be back in the morning. That’s not even counting the times he was out of the office on work business. It was deranged, especially since he had the type of job where he would normally be in and out of the office often.