A couple work friends and I banded together years ago to fill each others’ voicemails so it would be impossible to leave us new voicemails.
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The attendant menu for your main contact number may be the first form of contact that a customer has with your business. Make sure your greeting is clearly articulated. Provide an option to speak with an operator if the caller has a question that is not addressed by the menu options.
Here's an auto-reply I created for my support account having some fun. But also throwing out an extra lifeline on the off chance I'm eaten by a bear. If the boss doesn't notice I'm missing, surely people emailing me will, right?
But your out-of-office message is as much for you as it is for the people receiving it, especially during the pandemic. “Boundaries have taken a big hit right now,” Ritter says. There’s a lot of pressure associated with missing something at work, and that stress has been heightened without the typical separation between office and home and with the added fear caused by an uncertain economy. An OOO message is a chance to set expectations, “to give yourself some breathing room and to ensure other people aren’t thinking negatively about you,” Ritter says, and it’s crucial for your mental health.
Then there was the occasional one who would do what Alison mentioned with the sickness excuses, and create a tale that read like a police report: “I must miss my deadline because, on the night of August 12, my 45-year-old sister was alone in her house when an intruder entered. He was a 6’1″ caucasian male wearing a black balaclava and carrying a candlestick. As my sister approached him, with the dog barking around her heels, she heard a distant car crash which led her to have a fatal … etc.” (This is not an actual excuse I received, just similar in detail to some of those that were submitted.) These ones I was pretty sure were a writing exercise, requiring time and effort that could have been put to better use on the actual assignment they had been given.
“We will get in touch with you very soon”.“Thank you for reaching out to us”.“Our representative we contact you ASAP”.
In this image, you're letting people know you're OOO with a "Missing" notice on a milk carton. Genius. Just be careful — this sort of autoresponder is best for internal emails, not for autoresponders that get sent to prospects and clients.
People often forget the power of an out of office message. One could even start their own language, as shown below:
Out of office messages provide an excellent chance for you to produce leads and enjoy your vacation in the best way.
A separate after-hours attendant menu can inform callers that your office is closed, state your business’ operating hours, and provide options that callers can immediately act upon. For example, you can direct them to your website for FAQs. If your business provides an account login page, remind your customers that they can login at any time to get general account information. In this situation, be proactive.
Hi there, Thank you for your email. I will be out of the office from [MM/DD] to [MM/DD] and will have limited access to email / will not have access to email. If this is urgent, please contact [NAME] at [EMAIL] or [PHONE]. I will do my best to respond promptly to your email when I return on [MM/DD]. Best.
Does this only work with contacts saved in my phone? I’m trying to get an auto response to prospective clients whom I don’t have saved in my phone.
Yes, I phoned a dentist office late in the day for a reinfected root canal problem and got a cutsy “humphrey bogart” fake reply on their voicemail — I thought it was extremely inappropriate for a business office to use something like this. It was hard to find it funny, especially because while calling me “sweetheart” and all that, the message didn’t actually tell me when they might return my call (later that day? Next day? Next week? Never?) nor did they offer any options for emergency contact with another dentist.
The OOO definitely has those two pieces. But it could be 1 of 4 people who handle things when I’m out (depending on what it is) and they may not know at all that the requestor had reached out to me first / forget to cc me. So, I’d see this as me adding to my OOO “if you contact person X, please keep me cc’ed on the message you send to person x”?
Goofy dad joke that doesn’t require changing with the calendar. “What do you call a cephalopod carved out of ice? COOLAMARI.” You’re set for at least three vacations on that one.
There is no vacation responder on iOS to auto-reply text on the iPhone. However, there is a workaround for the iPhone auto-reply while you are on vacation. We are going to use the DND mode feature to auto-reply to incoming text messages while you are on vacation. This will work perfectly while you want to set auto-reply text on your iPhone to reply to calls and messages automatically while you are on vacation. iPhone Settings Scroll down for Do Not Disturb Tap on Auto-Reply Fill out the vacation text message you want. Select the recipient list to All Contacts.