Sharing specific business information gives you the opportunity to deepen your relationship with your clients.Offering precise messages offers transparent information and reduces the risk of confusion.A good autoresponder can send visitors to your company’s website if they need immediate help.Final thoughts
Thanks so much for reaching out. I’m currently attending the [conference/event name] from [date] to [date] and will have limited access to email during this time.
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As part of the festivities, the company will reimburse all employees the price of two drinks during the party. Please submit your drink expenses using this form to People Operations by Wednesday, December 30th. In addition, People Operations has planned a fun night full of games, challenges, and cocktail lessons that are sure to get you excited for the holidays.
Other than that, I keep it simple like most folks here, but back in my younger days I had one that started something like “I am out of the office on vacation until (date). I will not be checking emails, voicemails, (work queue system), or generally thinking about this place at all…”
The boss’s thinking was that people who did drivebys looking for you would then email you, see your OOO, and then be able to call you to talk about whatever they were driving by for. No one liked putting their personal contact info so we never worked from home (pre-COVID and pre-VOIP implementation) or told people to IM us and we’d call them.
If this matter isn’t time-sensitive, rest assured that I’ll respond when I’m back from this break. But you can resend any messages that require my immediate attention with a subject line of “URGENT: [Original Subject].” Out of Office Template #6 For the Person Who Likes to Live on the Edge (of HR Protocol)
If you’ll be away for a portion of time observing a holiday, create a cheerful auto-reply in your absence! Instead of my phone, it’s the jingle bells that will be ringing until 1/2; I will be out of office until then, please expect a reply with 24 hours of my return. I’m leaving on a jet plane! The Stern Firm will be out of the office until 3/4 on a company-wide retreat. We will respond to all messages promptly upon return.
Including even a passing reference stating that your customer’s email is important to you shows your appreciation for the message that you are currently unable to respond to.
With these tips, you’ll be able to write your next auto-reply message, for holidays or other reasons.
I deal with this all day. I feel like some property management companies make their managers announce when they’re going to use the bathroom via auto-reply.
A literary agent I follow told the story of a long argument her autoreply had with a would-be author. She’d set up the outbound email while out of town and apparently an author who queried her with his book took offense to it. He replied back in frustration that he didn’t get a personal response. Her autoreply sent back another automated message, which he then in increasing anger kept responding to.
Same. There are a few people that are regularly in charge of things I need from them, but are part time. The vast majority of our office is full time. I have no idea when they’ll get back to me, or if I should email someone else. If I saw an OOO message every time they were gonna be gone Th-Fri, I would learn their schedule faster, and hopefully have the most up to date info about “oh, they changed their schedule due to Memorial Day, I can email them and get a response quicker this week” or whatever the issue is.
See, if it’s a long period of leave and there’s an alternate contact provided, this is just… the sensible thing that should happen?
Changing it every evening is definitely too much, though. I would assume the vast majority of people sending business email understand the concept of working and non-working hours…
A well-deserved holiday deserves a substantial out-of-office message that really hammers home the fact that they’re still working, while you’re off on your travels – nice and descriptive to really paint the picture!
That’s weird! I would specifically not say maternity leave, since I don’t want to invite a lot of questions about the birth, baby, etc. when I come back to work. Just let me focus on catching up on my job! (I work with a lot of external clients, though. Internal-only would be different.)
I pretty consistently just do “Greetings, I will be out of office from (date) to (date) with (limited/no) access to email. If you need assistance, please contact (boss) at (email address) – otherwise, I will follow up with you upon my return. Thanks!”