Sample voicemail for individual’s work phone: “You have reached the voicemail for (name) at The University of Toledo. The University is closed for winter break. Please leave your name, number and a brief message after the tone, and I will return your call after New Year's Day. Thank you and happy holidays.”
Though you were ending with a “for everything else, there’s Mastercard” for a moment!
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The date range you're gone but more importantly . . . The day you will respond. (Pro tip: If you seriously get a ginormous volume of emails when you're away, or you're going to be gone for an extended amount of time, make sure this date is one or two days AFTER you're back from your vacation. Under promise, over deliver, do your laundry.) Alternate contact if there is an emergency. Your phone number (if you absolutely must, but I don't endorse this).
Do you know what we’re doing too much of? We’re working too much, and we think too seriously about ourselves while doing it. That’s why including a joke or something fun in your out of office message could be so powerful.
I’ll be back in front of my computer on [date] and will respond to your message at that time. If you need immediate assistance, please send an email to [Contact Name] at [contact email] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out.
I kept it even though I received it four years ago because it made me laugh so much!
The science fiction writer John Scalzi says “The failure mode of clever is asshole,” which seems to apply here.
Thank you for your email. I’ll be offline starting Friday, November 20 through the Thanksgiving holiday with limited access to email, and will respond to your email upon my return on Monday, November 30. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Maria Gonzalez, my fellow digital marketing manager here at MixCo Media, at [email protected]. Thanks for your patience!
But you don’t need to write an instruction guide for people as though they’re incapable of solving their own problems without you.
So, take a lesson from @courtwhip, editor at PEDESTRIAN.TV, who wrote the above hilarious out-of-office email, fully stocked with mentions of the best movies from the 1990s. (By the way, "Splinter" is from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and as we all know, he loves pizza.)
“With 76% of people reusing passwords, hackers only need to guess one to gain access to multiple accounts,” Sadler says.
I wrote the above comment off the top of my head. I wish I had time to rewrite and edit it. I would have changed “their goldfish” to “a spider they accidentally stepped on”, and would have added more detail to the story of the sister’s death (e.g. “her Pomeranian yapping” rather than the less descriptive “her dog barking”). Unfortunately, I could not do the thorough writing job required for that comment because someone close to me recently … – The person whose out of office advertised his gig on the weekend, for anyone in travelling to [city] – The people in a certain department who have taken to saying things like “if you really need to contact me, call 000-YYY-XXXX where Y is the square root of [insert numbers] and X is the year plutonium was discovered.” – The ones where people have an auto response saying they only check their emails once a day between 1-2pm – “I’m on research leave and I may be slow to reply.” (Whereby it is guaranteed they will reply immediately, because academics do not *really* take breaks).
Lastly, don’t forget to set your out-of-office greeting for your office and mobile phones while you’re out.
how-do-you-put-an-out-of-office-message-on-a-public-holiday-118462085 / 5 based on 2 votes.
Thank you for your message. I’m on sick leave and will get back to you as soon as I return to the office.
Automated reply messages are predefined responses used to communicate with customers across specific scenarios and keep information transparent. It helps customers to understand what is actually happening – whether your agents are busy, out of the office, or on holidays.
Website: https://community.cisco.com/t5/ip-telephony-and-phones/activating-closed-or-holiday-greetings-during-business-hours/td-p/2460502