A client rings to tell you your out-of-office message has a typo in it, or, worse, is mind-numbingly boring. Suddenly you’re wrenched out of holiday mode and back into the throes of work, weeping as you log back into your email server to change your response as your shandy grows warm and flat.
It’s possible I might quote from some responses to this in an upcoming column, so please note if you don’t want me to do that with yours!
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Make sure that customers who attempt to contact you know when you expect to be in the office again. Most customers will understand the desire to devote time and energy to the family during the holidays, but they want to know when you'll be back to provide them with your usual excellent customer service.
Hi, I am currently attending a training session. As a result, my reply might take a bit longer than usual. I apologize for that. I will be able to respond in a more timely manner starting from [DATE].
So what do good out-of-office messages look like? Here are a handful of examples that will help you craft the perfect out-of-office message:
My pet peeve is OOOs for the afternoon/an appointment when the person who set it up is NOT good at responding to emails in a timely fashion. If someone usually requires multiple reminders and follow up emails for me to get a reply to an email after 2 weeks, I don’t really need a notification that their responses will be delayed an hour until they get back from the doctor. It makes me think “who are you responding to that quickly, and why can’t you reply to me that fast??”
Or, in the case of Samarah Miel, owner of Amarillo Travel Network, her out of office message is a fabulous mix of sales/bonding with others in the industry/promoting her expertise to clients. Bonus points for including a video!
Okay. So, it’s not to my exact personal tastes — to me, it’s overly wordy — but it’s probably fine for their culture and I’d be mildly amused if I got it. I see where you’re seeing condescension, but I think you can read it without that too.
There was a lot of pushback on this, discussion about how big a risk was that really anyway, people saying that John could word his out of office in such a way that people didn’t have to know he was actually away, and if something really was an emergency people would like to know that they have the opportunity to “direct queries to Sam or Dean” so they could be actioned, or make the judgement call that something could wait for John to return.
No one thinks much about cybersecurity while traveling. However, email security company Tessian warns the out of office message actually plays right into the hands of threat actors and cybercriminals. It’s a social engineering attack vector that no one thinks about. The out of office message is ubiquitous and handy. But if it includes any personal information at all — such as attending a funeral or going out of the country — attackers have all the information they need to impersonate the person who is out of the office, without the attacker having to do any real work.
An out of office message is important because it let's you keep people informed and tells them how to proceed in your absence. The Out of Office message for Social Media is cool. I can really include this on my Chat Bot now. Thanks for sharing it Christin.
I’ve heard “please respond at *your* earliest convenience,” but never the other way around.
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Readers, what do you like and hate in out-of-offices replies? Any stories of particularly off-key ones?
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office for the holidays and will be back on [date]. During this period I will have limited access to my email. If you need to contact me, I can be reached on [number, another email, mailing address], otherwise, I will respond to your email on my return.
Top of the iceberg though. Oh, and she also works with external contacts, including prospective clients.
During the holidays, many offices shut down in a way that they do not throughout the rest of the year. For these rare few days, you may be completely inaccessible to customers and unable to help employees who are trying to sneak in a little extra work through the holidays. Use this checklist to make sure that you've shut down the office correctly--and that you're able to get everything back up and running smoothly again when the holidays are over.