The season of good cheer is upon us and you can feel the anticipation in the air. Most of us will be taking at least some vacation, and we all want to get the most out of our time away. So before you re-post your standard out-of-office reply, stop and ask yourself: will the way you’ve written the message really help you do just that?
I’ll be sure to reply to your message when I wade through my inbox upon my return. If your message is urgent and requires immediate attention, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email].
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Just because I’m that person, I may have actually contacted you with a “Hope you’re having a great time!”
Hi, I’m out of the office. Thank you for getting in touch. We’ll get back to you within 8 business hours.
Your out-of-office message needs to set expectations around communication. First, provide information about when you’ll return. Misner suggests giving yourself an extra date to catch up.
Yeah, it’s very strange. I understood changing voicemails to explain that the line can’t actually be answered, but someone is checking the messages and will respond (though that was also only an issue for the first few months), but they had no reason to even mention it for email. I started my job 3 months into lockdown, and by that point, procedures were in place to pretty much allow us to operate normally, albeit with a lot more done electronically than before.
I’ll be enjoying this year’s holiday season from [DATE] until [DATE]. For general inquiries about [DEPARTMENT/ROLE], please email [CONTACT NAME]. If this isn’t time sensitive, feel free to resend this email in [MONTH] once I’m regularly checking emails again. All the best.
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Before we further discuss some of the examples of a good out of office message, decide for yourself what you want to get from it and what tone are you going to use.
Does your company publish blogs or offer downloadable ebooks, reports, or case studies? If so, add a P.S. to the end of your vacation message linking your readers to some content they can learn from or engage with.
If your auto reply messages give customers the ‘what next’ picture it will make customers feel that you as a brand can visualize their problem by putting in their shoes.
The only thing that isn’t boilerplate in mine is the inclusion of “But what if I have a word emergency?” before the who to contact stuff. I removed it at one point and people asked me to put it back in because it made them smile. And yep, we’re writers so the only emergencies we deal with are ones related to words.
Ha! Maybe she was short-circuiting someone who would send an email and then come over to her desk 5 minutes later to “see if you got my email.”
If you require immediate assistance, please email [email protected] in my absence. Thanks.
The good news is, automating text messages is as simple to set up as a pre-recorded voicemail prompt or an out of office email reply. We’ll show you how it’s done and share some ideas for how you can leverage the power of automation.
6. Simple Automatic Email Reply Example. [Your Greeting] I will be away from (Date of Leave) until (Date of Return). For all urgent matters, you can contact
If I got an OoO just to tell me to have a good day, I would find that person and throw water on their computer. They’re obviously not qualified to operate one.