From the familiar to the more unexpected, peruse some of the different uses for automated text replies.
Small Business Voicemail Greeting Examples. 4. Hi, this is [your name]. I’m unable to take your call right now but leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. 5. Hi, this is [your name]. I can’t get to the phone right now, but please leave a message with your name and number, and I’ll get back to you as
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However, I will be taking periodic breaks from binge-watching everything I’ve missed to check my email [once per day/every evening/occasionally] while I’m away.
What’s the beef against part time staff? I am part time and I think it’s a courtesy to let correspondents know when I am at my desk. I also appreciate getting it from other people as I can either escalate or make s mental note of when I expect to hear back.
To set automatic out of office replies on the Microsoft Outlook desktop app, go to File > Automatic Replies > Send automatic replies.
My team had a standard Christmas OOO, because we had international clients who needed reminding that basically the entire country is OOO 25th-1st. The message itself was fairly boring, but the template had “xxxx” as a placeholder for your signoff, and every single year someone would say “I’m not sure I’m comfortable giving our clients that many kisses”
My OOO auto reply is fairly detailed. I have links to information for products I work with, an alternate point of contact for people to approach, etc. It’s really a CYA thing. What irks me about some OOO auto replies is when the person who is out has an alternate point of contact who is also out. Both are obvious planned absences, and both people are on the same team. Don’t they talk to one another about vacation??
Something that actually was an issue with my employer ages ago: at one time there was a policy that out of office would only go to internal people, and nothing would be sent at all to anyone external. Apparently this was felt necessary in order to mitigate risk of burglary, so people wouldn’t know that “John Winchester has gone on a hunting trip” and that his house was empty.
Auto Attendants easily route your calls and can be set with a holiday-specific greeting. You can choose to select a schedule adjusted for holiday hours or carry over the rules set for regular business hours.
I’ll add my shout out to MS and Outlook for not only being able to schedule OoO auto replies, but for having internal and external facing options.
Merry Christmas.Happy Hanukkah.Joyous Kwanzaa.Yuletide Greetings.Happy holidays.Joyeux Noël.Feliz Navidad.Seasons Greetings.
5. It’s not all about Christmas, Cyber Monday, or Black Friday. When referring to the holidays, you might be thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, or maybe Hanukkah.
To my mind, it’s just a really bad idea to mass delete stuff that comes in while you’re out. You never know if those emails contain important (though non-actionable) information that you’ll need. You really can’t expect people to resend information like that once you’re back, especially if you were cc’d on something.
That’s my practice, too, though I only use it for times I’ll be out for a day or more. Some of the work I do and support can be very time sensitive and it’s really the most efficient use of *everyone’s* time if I spend two minutes before I leave setting up OOO so that they are quickly directed to the right person instead of having to go check my calendar, see I’m out for a week, try to remember who it is that’s my backup, etc.
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.
Yeah, that bugs me because a) now I don’t know when you actually will be back, and b) leaves me unsure what other information in the message may also out of date
Note: If you don’t see Automatic Replies, use Rules and Alerts to set up your out-of-office message.