i’m just waiting for the inevitable “Believe it or not, ___ isn’t at work. where could i beeee?” a la Seinfeld
With all that in mind, take a look at the following tips and tricks and six examples to make your automatic responses more effective:
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The email I send out always says something along the lines of “I’ll be away Thursday and Friday, so if you need anything from me, please let me know before noon on Wednesday. Thanks!”
I’ll be back in front of my computer on [date] and will respond to your message at that time. If you need immediate assistance, please send an email to [Contact Name] at [contact email] so that the other elves in this workshop can help you out.
You don’t have to disclose the specific reason for your absence in your out-of-office message. You can simply say “I’m on leave” or “I’m currently out of the office.” This goes for any reason you’re OOO.
My favorite thing is setting my OOO to only run for a specific amount of time. I will absolutely forget to turn it off if I have to do it manually, but we can just set a date/time range for it to start/stop. So I usually start it around 4 pm the day before and end it at 7 or 8pm the night before I return.
Q. What if I need to work during winter break, such as to conduct ongoing research that cannot be delayed until after the break?
Smugness: it’s almost impossible to dodge in an OOO. London-based poet Rishi Dastidar, whose debut collection Ticker-Tape is billed as a “maximalist take on 21st Century living”, embraces this and lets his inner show-off have free rein by penning poems for his OOOs. “Yes, the tone of these poems is a little self-satisfied – but if you have to tell colleagues you are away, why not try and do it with a little style and pizzaz?” he points out, adding that it’s also one of the few mediums where you’re guaranteed an audience. Here’s how he explained he was away in France:
Please leave your name, phone number, and a short message and I'll be sure to return your call. Hi, this is [your name] at [X company]. I am unavailable at the moment, but please leave your name, phone number, and the reason you’re calling, and I’ll call you right back. Hi, you’ve called [your name] at [X company].
I actually hate that feature – I LOVE manually updating it myself but I know most of my coworkers benefit from having it that way.
Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the office, with no email access. I will be returning on (Date of Return).
5. It’s not all about Christmas, Cyber Monday, or Black Friday. When referring to the holidays, you might be thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, or maybe Hanukkah.
Thank you for your email. Your message is important to me and I will respond as soon as possible. Thank you!
I would very much like to meet him, and I don’t know if that proves or challenges his point…
I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
I hate when senders ignore the instructions in my OOO message. Usually, my message is something simple like: “I am out [Dates], returning to the office [Date]. Please contact Jane (jane’s email address) in my absence. General [department] questions may be sent to [general dept email address].” To me that says if you are sending me anything then I won’t see it until I return. If you have something you need to be resolved right away, you can contact Jane or send it to our department inbox (where it should be going anyway).
I think my personal VM still says, “Ahoy, ahoy!” In my best Mr. Burns voice. I’m a woman.