If you require immediate assistance, please email [email protected] in my absence. Thanks.
“There is something especially cruel about advocating for your boundaries while disrespecting other peoples.”
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With all that in mind, read on for a few examples of what you might actually write...
Hi, Happy holidays! I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I’ll be returning on [date] and will get back to you as soon as I can. Happy holidays!
Perhaps I’m you guys’ worst nightmare, but for the past couple of years I’ve been writing haikus for my OOO, which give a flavour of what I’m out doing. A couple of examples:
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We also had to reply to any emails we received within 4 hours. Even if we didn’t have an answer.
Of course that all depends on if you have employees, etc., but i’ve seen those dynamics recently and think it’s interesting to see who someone leaves as their OOO contact. What do you guys think? Am I reading too much into it?
Half of the auto-replies I get are for very specific chunks of time. Like, if you are out of the office for three hours I don’t need to know, dude.
Plus the world of technology has moved on from answering machines (which is all voice mail is) so… nice vintage projector you got there
I don’t need some fancy, forensic gin-juggler to tell me why I like something. Just keep it simple. And real happiness is about simplicity.
Not to mention, there are all sorts of oddball situations where you might wish you gave another option. No chance that a call from a big client, the CEO, or a supplier might get routed there? Not to mention enforcement agencies that are often “we sent the required notice to the contact info I was given” before they issue a citation or pull a license or tow the company van.
Amanda works at HubSpot, and she came with a unique auto respondent that asked her contacts to guess where she is. To give background, she flew down to Boston to attend a Red Sox training game in the spring with her father. She chose to ask her contacts whether where they think she might be, and also this played some wonderful use of litotes here:
If you have a corporate email account at work, the chances are you'll also have some kind of setting that enables you to tell people when you're on holiday or out on the office on business. But what if you don't? Or just want to set up an email auto reply on your Mac at home?
Erin Ollila is a content strategist and writer who believes in the power of words and how a message can inform — and even transform — its intended audience. Reach out to her on Instagram at @ErinOllila, or visit her website erinollila.com.
The key to a good note is to let the person feel that you are really thinking of them. A good note keys into the person it's being sent to and reflects a special connection. (If you're writing to someone you don't know well, this is even harder. But I'll get to that later.) 1. Don't write the note when you haven't got a lot of time to think and ...
There are a lot of ways to improve your out of office message, but you should first make sure that you covered the most important stuff.