As a person who hates voicemail, I applaud this. Send me an email. Give me a paper trail.
Come Christmas time, there’s nothing quite like tidying up your desk, shamefully closing your 50 Chrome tabs, and switching on your out-of-office responder for the holidays.
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I’ll be back on [DAY OF WEEK], [DATE]. No explanations, no apologies, no promises to respond, no redirects to other colleagues. It works.
Everything’s a little off-kilter as we continue to contend with the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s hard to step away from work when the “office” is the dining room table you can see from your couch. It feels a little strange to take PTO when travel and boisterous family gatherings seem like a distant memory. You might be working odd hours so you can juggle childcare and other responsibilities. Or maybe your full-time job became a part-time one (or an on-hold one) as a result of the economic downturn that hit along with the coronavirus.
Acknowledging the customer support messages with well-designed auto responders helps them to know what will be your next step for the request they have raised. They become sure that you as a business are looking into the issue and they will get the resolution soon.
Consider also adding a funny GIF or a meme to such an email, some interesting but silly facts, or maybe include a short and harmless joke.
I want to know how everyone who works from home is wording their OOOs. Are you saying you’re out of the office? Away from your computer? Have closed the door to your home office?
Proof that some people just Don’t Get It: in response to my out of office voicemail message directing callers to contact my co-worker for anything urgent, a woman left the following message on MY voicemail: “Co-worker, I am having this issue, blah, blah, blah. Please call me at X.” Yeah, I–not co-worker–got the message a week later when I returned.
I’m mostly back in my actual office now, but I went with “away from my computer between X and Z” a couple of times and just straight up “I am on annual leave between X and Z” a couple of times.
Hi, I am currently out of the office. I know I’m supposed to say that I’ll have limited access to email and won’t be able to respond until I return, but that’s not true. My phone will be with me and I can respond if I need to. However, I promised my family I would try to relax.
Education Details: How to Set Up an Out of Office Message in Gmail. Gmail makes it easy to set up an out of office message. Head to the Settings menu and remain in the General tab. Scroll down until you find the “Vacation responder” option. Here, you’ll have the option to turn the Vacation responder on (it’s off by default). Once on, Gmail will send your
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Feel free to share some examples of auto-reply messages that you have used or such that you’ve received. Include those in the comments below, and we can have a chat.
Hello and thanks for your email. I’m currently out of the office until [MM/DD] with limited / no access to email. If your request is urgent, please contact [NAME] at [EMAIL or PHONE]. In the meantime, did you know we have a weekly / monthly enewsletter?
Be aware of your tone. Keep it clean and simple. Sullivan says: “Even if you work in a casual office environment, the people emailing you may not. It's fine to have a light tone in your communications, especially when you're in an email conversation with someone directly, but your OOO is more of a blast message—including a cat meme or silly quote could backfire if your OOO goes to, say, a new client prospect or the sales director at a company you've been trying to engage.”
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I will be out of the office starting (Starting Date) through (End Date) returning(Date of Return). If you need immediate assistance during my absence, please contact (Contacts Name) at (Contacts Email Address). Otherwise I will respond to your emails as soon as possible upon my return. Thank you for your message. How do you respond to holiday greetings? "And (also) to you!" You too! Thanks, same to you! Happy New Year to you and yours (when you want to extend the wishes to the other person's family) How do you let clients know you are going on vacation?