We look forward to assisting you with all your scan tool needs in 2017! Happy Holidays! Sales & Order Inquiries Track My Order Online Payment Info Shipping & Returns Warranty
It was a commodities trading firm. I still barely know what they do. But, I would answer the phone, listen to whatever they said, understand not much and then I would say “lemme put you on hold” and then I would turn to the nearest person not on the phone and I’d say something dumb like “They’re calling about like…salt maybe?” And then I’d transfer to that person and they would figure out who it went to. (They all knew who was trading what that day. Nobody ever told me.)
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They weren’t saying that’s the entirety of their message, just that that’s the phrase they’re using instead of ‘out of office’
Website: https://community.cisco.com/t5/ip-telephony-and-phones/activating-closed-or-holiday-greetings-during-business-hours/td-p/2460502
Give them the dates. Don't leave your sender guessing. Let them know when you'll be out and the date you'll be back in the office — not when you're returning home.
It’s summer, and you’re probably gearing up to take some time off work – including tying up loose ends, putting some final touches on projects, and figuring out the process of delegating. So many factors go into making sure you can actually disconnect, relax, and recharge over your planned vacation.
Vacation/Out-of-Office Auto-Reply Messages: It’s important to create an email message out of office autoresponder when you are taking a vacation or going to be out of office for a few days. It’s a perfect way to communicate anticipated delays to your clients and customers and it serves a practical function and if you’re doing it right it could contribute to your company expanding.
Once they realize that your office is currently closed, the most important piece of information they probably want to know is your standard business hours. While this information can be tucked behind a phone menu option, it's best to state it upfront in your after hours recording.
Or, worse, when someone has left the organization and the organization hasn’t bothered to put up an OOO, so I’m just emailing a blackhole until I call or someone finally checks that inbox. I never fail to set up my OoO reply, and yet most of my external contacts don’t get them. Let’s say I work for LlamaCombs, with an name(@)llamacombs.com address, and this is a company who has two clients AlpacaBrush and VicunaShampoo. I work primarily with the second, and their internal directory lists my contact info as name(@)vicunashampoo.com. It works because any e-mail sent to the second address is auto-forwarded to the first. Except it messes up OoO replies big time. Because the auto-reply is sent to my own alternate address, not to the original sender, and I have no way to change that.
Same, I think it’s patronizing to talk people through their options as if they can’t make a decent choice without having their hand held every step of the way. There are plenty of people who can’t, of course, but I don’t think a long, verbose message is necessarily going to help.
So what do good out-of-office messages look like? Here are a handful of examples that will help you craft the perfect out-of-office message:
We look forward to assisting you with all your scan tool needs in 2017! Happy Holidays! Sales & Order Inquiries Track My Order Online Payment Info Shipping & Returns Warranty
But let’s talk out-of-office messages: overshares, excessive detail, the ones that self-aggrandize (I once had a coworker whose auto-replies often said he’d be in late because he “pulled an all-nighter” on various work projects, etc.), the ones that never get turned off, people who don’t use them at all, and other pet peeves.
And it's worth pointing out—in case, like me, you missed it because you were awed by her approach to her parental OOO—the response is completely in sync with the New York Times' culture/brand. (You can find her OOO with live links here.)
Of course, every message sends a message, even a barebones OOO that seems to say nothing more than that you’re away until next week, so why not try to inject a little personality? You could get quirky by giving your auto-responder robot a personality. You could dispense with words altogether and substitute a gif or emojis. Or how about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada? It might be worth noting here that the amount of personality you inject depends on your trade. What earns you cachet in the creative industries might backfire in the financial sector, for instance.
If your request is urgent, there’s no use sitting idly in my inbox. So, please send your request to [contact name] at [contact email].
So there you have it! While having fun with your auto-responder, try not to get carried away and end up upsetting anyone or get in trouble with HR! 😉