It’s possible I might quote from some responses to this in an upcoming column, so please note if you don’t want me to do that with yours!
So many people emailed Ryan that Aviation Gin's servers crashed. Here's his July 2018 out of office message:
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Thank you for your message. I will be out of the office starting [start date] and returning [return date]. While I am [reason for absence], I will have limited email access.
The above automated messages do not sound assuring as the time is not specified in terms of hours, days, or week. Here is a good example that businesses can follow to deliver effective customer service communication.
Wish you a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving! Wishing you the gift of faith and the blessing of hope this thanksgiving day! We gather on this day to be thankful for what we have, for the family we love, the friends we cherish, and for the blessings that will come. Happy Thanksgiving!
My colleagues have this weird habit of not using out of office messages, but instead, sending all staff or all manager emails before they go on vacation letting everyone know they’re going to be gone for x amount of time. It’s really odd. I do not do this.
Brad, You can manually turn on DND to activate Auto Reply, explained in the article.
Both your customers and your employees need to know how long your business will be shut down for the holidays. Provide notice well in advance. Depending on the types of services you offer, you may need to start notifying customers as early as a month out. It would be best if you were to provide these important notifications at least two weeks before the holiday shutdown. Employees should also be reminded regularly that the company will not be open during those important days.
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You crossed everything off your to-do list and cleared out your inbox. There’s one last thing for you to do: Write and activate the out-of-office message on your email.
Once I got an auto reply from a stakeholder on a project that said something to the effect of “Thanks for contacting me. Due to the large volume of email I receive, I don’t read them all. If I haven’t responded within 3 business days, please try again.”
Every customer interaction is important to showcase your brand personality and auto reply messages are no different. Hence, you need to make the right use of every opportunity and convert it into a good experience. Automated reply messages help you to provide great customer experience and also sets the right expectation.
Which is why the workers who do have the ability, whether through place within the hierarchy or company culture, should not squander it. In fact, they should recognize the OOO as an opportunity to model and normalize organizational or even industry-wide guardrails (as opposed to bullshit feebly-maintained ‘boundaries’). It’s why, starting this summer, we need to embrace the blunt, descriptive OOO message.
Click the cog and select ‘Settings’Scroll down to ‘Out of Office AutoReply’Specify a time periodWrite your out of office emailConfirm other details and press ‘Save Changes’
Thank you for you email. I am out of the office from [insert date] until [insert date]. If you have an urgent request, please contact [insert name] at [insert email].
An old boss had a pet peeve about this so I became very conscious of making sure that I listed out who to contact on what day… before the group email. So it looked something like this:
Q. Will Supply Chain, Purchasing, Receiving, Mail Services and other such departments be open during winter break?