8x8 & COVID-19: Protecting Our Business and YoursContact Center Inbound Calling Performance Issues
Dear Customer, Thank you for your email, but our company is out of office, celebrating [HOLIDAY]. Unfortunately, it means we will not be able to send you any reply until [DATE]. We apologize for the delay but wish you a wonderful holiday season. Best regards.
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Regardless of my general health and hygiene over the silly season, I’ll be back in the office on January 2. 15. “Thank you for your consideration during this festive or not-festive time.”
Mine tend towards the latter for both internal and external and only get a little more expository if it’s a closedown period and I’m adding leave to one end of it, but that’s a simple “The organisation is shut between X and Y. For emergencies during this time please contact Team. I am on leave between Z and B and will not be accessing my email during this time. Please contact Email Address if your enquiry is urgent otherwise I will attend to your email as soon as is practicable upon my return.”
I’ll be back in front of my computer on [date] and will respond to your message at that time. If you need immediate assistance, please send an email to [Contact Name] at [contact email] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out.
I find it rude because if I emailed them, it might be an FYI but requiring no action. If they just delete it, they might then be confused about project status later. I would be annoyed to have to re-send a message after the fact because they don’t think ANY email during their time off has value.
(If you have certain projects you cover list project name and the person covering you).
You can configure automated reply messages to encourage customers to submit their queries.
Ha reminds me of an admin here once who would leave like 10 bullet points on who to contact for what. We got a kick out of the point that was “for catering emergencies…contact…”.
That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:
I will be out of the office until *date*. My colleague *Name* will be happy to assist you.
Coworkers, clients, and subscribers typically expect fast responses and solutions to their problems, particularly from people working in customer service, marketing, and communications jobs. Out of office messages provide them with a polite, concise, and professional explanation of why you cannot respond right away. You can provide an OOO message if you are gone for one day, one week, or several months.
Under the customization option, you can configure the pre-chat form to create personalized offline messages. You can clearly mention the business hours and ask customers to fill up the form with the relevant sales or support query. Inform them that your support representative will be connecting with them at the earliest to sort out the issue.
You got this email immediately (classic autoresponder behavior), which means I’m out of office on vacation.
It’s great to hear from you. I’m currently out of the office until mm/dd with limited/ no access to my email. Anyway, feel free to contact [email] in case your request is urgent.
I find it rude because if I emailed them, it might be an FYI but requiring no action. If they just delete it, they might then be confused about project status later. I would be annoyed to have to re-send a message after the fact because they don’t think ANY email during their time off has value.
During the holidays, you may also want to send holiday greetings to colleagues who are on the same team as you. In this situation, your message can be more casual and include inside jokes, depending on how close you are to your coworkers. Take a look at these holiday messages to colleagues.