But I'm someone who has co-workers in almost every time zone, on almost every continent, and in almost every geographic region, and I simply can't imagine using most of these examples with co-workers in, say, South Korea or Japan or Nicaragua. Like, the account manager who reaches out to me for help accessing a particular system in Seoul doesn't need my personal story about why I'm taking time off and all the fun (or, for that matter, not fun) things that I'll be doing — they need help gaining access to [system] in order to complete the job tasks that have been assigned to them. If I am not available to help them, they need to know who can, and if there just *isn't* anyone else who can perform this task, they need to know when I will be able to.
Your out of office message can link to testimonials from your happy clients. For those of us in travel, you could try something like:
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Our office will remain closed until the end of this week for Thanksgiving Holidays. We assure you that all your emails will be answered as soon as we return to the office. Happy Thanksgiving!
When people leave first name contact only as if we’re supposed to know who Susan or Frank are..
Agreed, the whole quirky-cute thibg annoys me, but human drives me up the wall. I cant articulate what about it grates me.
This is one reason I rarely give a contact person. My company is terrible at communication, and not only could you easily be sent on a OOO chain, you could also be emailing someone who is out who didn’t even use OOO.
*When a holiday falls on a Saturday, it is observed on the preceding day. (When the preceding day is also a holiday, both holidays are observed on preceding days.) When a holiday falls on a Sunday, it is observed on the following work day.
Our Public Service Announcement: Each year, Americans leave 700 million DAYS of paid time off on the table. Stop and think about how many great out of office reply opportunities are missed because of this!
By providing this information for anyone who tries to contact you, it ensures important emails don’t go unnoticed or ignored.
If you are unavailable and a client needs contact, a colleague’s contact information can be included. The text should also indicate when it’s appropriate to contact the alternate. Some people will indicate that the contact is for urgent matters while others may offer for consistent client care.
LinkedIn Users By Country and Statistics (2021) Sep 23 - Founded in 2003 Linkedin has over 706 million members, 50 million listed companies and is available in 24 languages with… Read More »
I am out of the office from [date range]. If you need immediate assistance, please contact [name, title and contact information].
Calls/SMS Auto Reply app lets you add customized out of office messages that it sends automatically in response to missed calls and texts so that your clients or co-workers know what they can expect. A prompt auto-response is a great way to save relationships and trust and retain customers. You can use these messages to tell them when you will respond and what they should do in case they need urgent assistance.
If I’m out for three months, *someone* is doing each bit of my job in that time. Me coming back and wading through three months of emails where the majority of them will involve someone seeing the OOO and promptly emailing my cover instead, and trying to track down which ones did that and cc-ed me, which ones did that and *didn’t* cc me, and which ones fell off is just a terrible use of getting-back-up-to-speed time.
As for this one I think it’s fine for internal particularly if someone can “read it in her voice” and knows she’s quirky but I’d probably just do a short one for external (or none? because I’ve heard there is some kind of security risk with them?)
The start of the holiday season does not mean letting your inbox enjoy the same degree of leisure and festivities as you do. Despite being busy with all the buzz and planning, you can hardly lock your business’ door before taking care of what happens with your inbox.
How's that for an out-of-office message? Probably not ideal. As a working professional, emails are your lifeline. And even when you're not around to respond, you need to let senders know you're not actually ignoring them.