A few years ago we had a team meeting, with the typical agenda provided to all by our manager. One of the items was OOO and the manager’s name and dates of her upcoming vacation–of course, to give the team advance notice that she would be out. One of my colleagues did not know the acronym and was at first confused. His read: “Ooooh, Mary is on vacation for these dates and is so excited.” Which I am sure was the case, but . . . no, not exactly. Ha ha.
An out of office message is basically a quality of life feature both for you and your business contacts. By warning your clients that you won’t be able to reply to their message right away you save the time they might have wasted on follow ups. You also won’t lose prospects who might’ve believed that you’re ignoring their request otherwise.
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Your out-of-office message needs to set expectations around communication. First, provide information about when you’ll return. Misner suggests giving yourself an extra date to catch up.
In this post, I’ll go over what an OOO message is and share some of the best examples I’ve found on Google, as well as a few from my coworkers.
Have you ever received or written an out-of-office message that you really liked? If you’re up to sharing them, we’d love to see your favorites. Don’t forget to share this post with friends and colleagues!
Bon voyage! You’re going on your holidays and you’re completely leaving the office behind. This is the perfect auto-response if you won’t be checking your emails the entire trip.
I wouldn’t be offended or consider saying anything to anyone who included this in their out of office message, but even as someone who is in a religion that forbids use of electronics on most holidays, I still think this message is 1) TMI; 2) doesn’t convey what it needs to convey unless you are explaining that you don’t use electronics during holidays, in which case you can just include that you won’t be checking email without including the religious explanation; 3) would come across to me as inclusion of personal information I don’t need, which would therefore strike an unprofessional tone,and I wouldn’t understand why you felt the need to include that info. How about “I’m out of the office without access to internet or email until (date). If you need assistance before this date, please contact…” Like I said, I think your colleagues are overreacting, but in general I would advise to leave all personal information out of your auto-reply — vacation, medical leave, religious observance, etc. — people do not need to know why you are out.
12. "Hi, you've reached [company]. We're available by phone from [hour] to [hour] [time zone] Monday through Friday [optional: and from hour to hour on the weekends]. You can also contact us by going to our website, [URL], and live-chatting or emailing us. If you'd like us to call you back, please leave your name and number after the tone."
This is the perfect out of office for anyone who just LOVES Christmas. As in, the sort of person who does all their Christmas shopping in September, wears Christmas-related apparel all November and December, and probably single-handedly organised the entire office Christmas party.
I worked at an office where we used OOO messages on voicemail pretty regularly and if we forgot to change the message, our callers were quick to tell us the outgoing message was outdated. That end date feature would have been a big help for us! A local council in Wales needed to get a road sign translated into Welsh. (All official signs in Wales have to be in both English and Welsh.) They got an out of office message in Welsh from the translator they contacted, assumed that was the translation and printed the out of office message on the sign. They didn’t realise their mistake till a Welsh speaker pointed it out…
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Note that the poaching email does not have any other contact details other than the leaver's - this is to try and funnel all enquiries to the leaver as part of the poaching plan! More tips here.
For all pressing matters, please contact [Contact Name] at [contact email] for assistance.
It's August, so it's the time of the year when many workers' holidays come around and the time of year when setting up an out of office automatic reply is vital to ensuring you can enjoy your summer break in peace.
I work for a Japanese company which has a regular rotation of engineers who come over for 2-4 years so we get some enjoyable translations for all manner of communication.
These work voicemail greetings are for the work phone that you and only you use. They’re highly effective because they help you establish a relationship straight from the voicemail. Or they help you share an important update in a simple, straightforward way.
Note: If you don't see the Automatic Replies button, follow the steps to use rules to send an out of office message.