In my much, MUCH younger days, I printed out a photo of a cruise ship with an arrow and “I am here” pasted on it and taped it to my monitor…
Yes absolutely! I would be really annoyed if someone did that. I would probably have to set a reminder for myself to resend that email (or emails), which is more work for me. If I’m sending the email to several people, I’d also have to ask myself if I should resend it to everyone to follow up, or maybe just wait to send it. This would stress me out that something might slip through the cracks.
.
From 20th till 31st of July I will be out of the office with limited access to my email.
An out of office message is a compact text that conveys the most important facts:
The recipient may have filtering turned on that would reject the automatic reply;
Note: If you don't see Automatic Replies, use Rules and Alerts to set up your out-of-office message.
As a “don’t try this at home” anecdote, last week we had an all staff retreat, and we were asked to put up away messages. I put a perfectly professional one up for outside email, but in a fit of whimsy, the internal mail triggered an away message that said “Why are you emailing? We are supposed to be paying attention to the retreat!” I figured, we were all at the retreat, so nobody would ever know. Of course, someone did email me 30 minutes before everything started, and triggered the message. Fortunately, he figured out it was an away message and thought it was funny.
Who hasn’t longed to write something similarly huffy? Well, LA-based designer Paul Woods, for one. Woods is also the author of How to Do Great Work Without Being An Asshole and suggests opening your OOO with this: “Dear sender, As you are already aware, I am on vacation. However, as it appears that you have flagrantly ignored the numerous emails, in-person conversations and messages over the past week communicating this, below you can find a detailed recap what I will not be doing until my return…” It’s a recap that extends to wearing clothes, even in public, and moderating his consumption of hard liquor.
The main goal of an auto-respond email is to ensure clarity of communication expectations and offer appropriate alternatives.
I used to hire a lot (hundreds) of freelance writers who would each be given a deadline by which their particular project was due. As these were large projects, they typically would have several months to complete them. I soon discovered that a significant number of freelancers (at least 25% if I’m remembering correctly) would email a couple of days before their assignment was due to report the sad news that they would be missing their deadline because “someone close to [them] had just died”.
If you’re feeling stuck, try our free OOO email generator to draft a message that perfectly captures who you are and where you're going. Out-of-Office Messages for Vacation 1. “I’ll email you back once I’ve defrosted.”
First, and most importantly, let the people trying to get in touch with you know when you’ll be gone and when you’ll be returning. There’s one more date to add — when they can expect for you to return their message.
This is what I’ve seen most often in my career. Problem is, the contact is almost always the admin. I’m the admin. Everyone’s idea of assistance is different. Often, I didn’t have the knowledge about the issue in order to be of any assistance. I wound up spending more time running around looking for answers than actually working on what was on my own plate. It’s exhausting. Otherwise known as “please don’t call us for unicorn problems when we handle llamas. Literally, we can’t do anything for unicorn problems.”
Hi there. I’m out of the office until Monday, 14 August, with limited access to email.
Boss would put up an OOO when attending an event off-site, but would still be answering their emails, which meant that I would get “Boss said you were the correct contact, can you help?” Inevitably, I would respond and, two hours later, Boss would too, cc-ing me on the original email in which they shared the exact same info I had earlier that day. It was MADDENING.
This. I’m surprised more people dont havent mentioned this, but this has always been my back to work routine – and sometimes if vacations overlapped, I’d find a summary email of “While you were away, X,Y,Z happened, I covered A, but you might want to check on B and C” which was always very helpful.
Now it's much easier to deliver automated customer support and sales conversions with REVE Chat’s AI powered Chatbot.