If you’re out sick or caring for a loved one, you may not feel comfortable sharing the details. You can simply use words like “family situation” or “family matters,” which Smith says automatically garner some goodwill.
My boss had this problem (outdated message), but it wasn’t his fault. No matter how many times he changed it, it kept reverting to the original message and dates. Even IT couldn’t figure it out.
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If you receive a high volume of customer service texts, you may want an auto-response in place that acknowledges a customer query has been received. This can help buy you some time while attempting to reach as many people as you can. Hello! We received your inquiry and our support team is on it. We’ll get back to you in 20-30 minutes. Thank you for your patience!
From 20th till 31st of July I will be out of the office with limited access to my email.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to create awesome OOO email messages, we suggest trying out completely free OOO Email Generator, and you’ll have your perfect OOO email within seconds.
Consider also adding a funny GIF or a meme to such an email, some interesting but silly facts, or maybe include a short and harmless joke.
Oops, too late! I’m off on holiday right now until the 16th, probably sipping on a margarita while you read this. I’ll reply when I’m back, but if it’s super urgent, contact [email protected]. It wouldn’t be right for this message to go to your boss or a client. If you’re not sure who is going to receive your message, we suggest following a more formal template.
Huh. This is a rare column from you that I disagree with almost entirely. I guess to start with what I think you get right, there's no need to apologize for being out of office, and no one should feel obligated to deal with anything other than a legitimate emergency (which are, in most fields, truly rare) while on vacation or while taking time off.
My department still doesn’t allow us to send OOO auto-replies to external recipients because of one incident years ago (a customer tried to contact a sales rep about an urgent order, got the rep’s auto-reply, and in their ensuing panic, somehow got escalated all the way up to the company president). Any external emails we get are auto-forwarded to a centralized mailbox and (ostensibly) handled by another rep while we are out. It bothers me to know that my external contacts won’t get a reponse from me while I’m out and may think I’m just ignoring them.
Additionally, you can reference a person in charge of your business while you are way:
Sorry, you missed me. I’ll be away from the office until [date]. As my inbox didn’t join me on this trip, I will only be responding to emails only when I return. That will be on [date].
On the other hand, there may be times where you’re so embedded in a project that you truly need to stay connected while you’re out. If that’s the case, say so clearly with a message like this: “I’m away but will be checking messages regularly, so don’t hesitate to contact me directly at any time.” Saying anything less than this may cause people to try to respect your time away and work around you, which in this case could create problems.
The message will be automatically triggered in response to any incoming text received while the away message is turned on. Like this:
I recently described myself as being “out of the virtual office.” Away from the virtual office” would probably have been even more precise. I think whatever you say, people will understand what you mean.
does this work when you turn your phone off entirely? like if i set up an auto-reply to texts and then turn my phone off, will people get that response? i am about to travel internationally & would love to have this set up for when i’m off the grid & my phone is off.
As a “don’t try this at home” anecdote, last week we had an all staff retreat, and we were asked to put up away messages. I put a perfectly professional one up for outside email, but in a fit of whimsy, the internal mail triggered an away message that said “Why are you emailing? We are supposed to be paying attention to the retreat!” I figured, we were all at the retreat, so nobody would ever know. Of course, someone did email me 30 minutes before everything started, and triggered the message. Fortunately, he figured out it was an away message and thought it was funny.
With that in mind, we’ve put together five simple examples of what your out-of-office message could look like, from the wild and wacky to the simple and fact-y. And if you’re not sure about the logistics of actually setting your auto-responder, here’s a quick guide on how to do that.