It all boils down to honestly assessing your situation, deciding what degree of contact is appropriate, and then stating your intention clearly and succinctly.
Christmas Voicemail Pre Recorded Message 1 Thank you for calling, We are now closed for the Christmas holidays. If you wish to leave a message you can do so after the tone, and we will reply as soon as we return. We’d like to wish you a Happy Christmas and a …
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Depending on the type of holiday, you can create specific templates for various holidays such as Christmas Thanksgiving, New Year etc.:
I am currently on my annual leave and will return to the office on *date*. If your request is urgent, please contact my colleague *name* at *email* or *phone*.
Thank you for your message. I am out of the office from May 1-6 with limited email access. If you need immediate assistance, please contact my assistant editor, Alex Jordan, at [email protected] or 555-432-6100. Otherwise, I will respond to messages upon my return.
This is the perfect way to reduce the sheer email volume that you’ll return to, with a little anarchy involved…
It is not appropriate to say in the message that you will get back on the day you return from your vacation. You may have a lot of work to take care of on your first day after getting back; you don’t want to promise something you won’t be able to fulfil.
Finally, if leaving a private mobile phone feels like revealing too much, you can instruct your customers to contact you via email with the “URGENT” referenced in its subject:
I only set my out of office if I’m going to be gone for more than one full day. Like, right now I don’t bother if I’m going to be out for one day, because in general the people who email me either know I’m out for a day or are unfazed by waiting 24 hours for a response. The last time I went out of office for a week, I came back to about 65 emails, 9 of which would have actually required my attention when I weeded through them. If I got a higher email volume, I’d do for a single day though.
I will be out of the office from May 1-6. I will be checking email periodically, but for urgent assistance please contact Pat Rivera at [email protected] or 555-432-6100. In case of emergency, you can reach me on my cell at 555-789-6100
I do that for most cases. Occasionally I’ll change it to “I’m out of the country and will not have phone or email access.”
Meanwhile, I do sometimes put up long ones when I will be away for some days during a season in which there are a confluence of three or four very likely reasons someone would contact me, and who else they need to contact isn’t the same. Like, it’s high llama grooming season, and generally during this month I get two or three requests per week for each of llama bleaching (for which my backup is Stella), llama shaving (for which it’s Arturo), and llama perming (for which it’s Carter). My message says I’ll be out until blah blah, and if it’s not an urgent llama grooming issue, I’ll get back to you after that, but meanwhile, for urgent llama grooming here’s who to call.
I will be out of the office this week. If you need assistance while I’m away, please contact [NAME] at [EMAIL].
Even the most blunt Out Of Office responders can still offer some levity or can at least entertain. If you’re looking to spice up your OOO, try this wonderful Wikipedia OOO generator that Melody Joy Kramer and Alex Hollender built. It auto-generates an OOO response with either a link or a quote pulled from Wikipedia. It’s a cool little project and a nice starter template for you when you decide to tell everyone to buzz off and leave you alone for a bit.
An out of office message is basically a quality of life feature both for you and your business contacts. By warning your clients that you won’t be able to reply to their message right away you save the time they might have wasted on follow ups. You also won’t lose prospects who might’ve believed that you’re ignoring their request otherwise.
I am on sick leave with no access to emails and phone calls. Hence, kindly expect a delayed response.