Many in the MIT community will be taking vacation around the holidays and new year. If you’re in that group, you’ll want to set up automatic replies for your email and MITvoip phone. You can do this at work or at home. Read on for basic information and tips about auto-replies. Step-by-step instructions are available through the links provided.
9 scripts for holiday voicemail greetings. Below we have listed several ideas for great voicemail messages, depending on your company’s needs. 1. Happy [X holiday]! You’ve reached [ company’s name]. We are closed from [X date] till [X date] for the celebration of [X holiday].
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That’s what I always reasoned… better to annoy with too much information that saves hassle on the backend then be brief upfront and sentence people to OoO purgatory.
There’s a grim, apologetic vibe to these messages — I’m sorry I’m taking time for myself but I’ll try to check in on occasion! They’re a vivid reflection of a work culture that valorizes constant productivity and the near-total overlap of work and life. But they’re also do a terrible job of what they’re intended to do, e.g., set realistic expectations for both sender and recipient. A vague OOO message traps both parties in an uncomfortable liminal space where both productivity and rest go to die. The original sender is left unsure if they’ll be getting a timely response or a whether the email will go ignored for a time or forever. The original recipient has taken what is a rock solid excuse (time off) and cheapened it, offering a backdoor for email guilt to creep in.
When one of my colleagues is out of the office, he doesn’t mess around. In fact, he’s turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary from fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.
I had a coworker for the first 6 months or so of the pandemic set an out of office status on Teams that he was working from home and could be contacted at x number. Dude. We’re all working from home, and those stupid status messages are distracting!
Thank you for your email. Our offices are closed until [date]. If it’s something you need urgent assistance, Contact [Name] on [phone number] or [Email]
Education Details: An out of office message is a compact text that conveys the most important facts: How long you’ll be unreachable, when your contacts can expect an answer, (optionally) the reason for the absence, and, if necessary, a personal note. A referral to another email address, e.g. to one of your colleagues, is often helpful or even necessary.
People often forget the power of an out of office message. One could even start their own language, as shown below:
If you have critical projects that can’t wait until you return, offer a communication option like text messages, suggests Reeves. “I have found, to my delight, that people really are judicious about texting you while on vacation,” he says, with one caveat. “Don’t put your mobile number in the away message. That way, only people who have your mobile number can text you. And those are the ones you care most about.”
Seriously, literally, anything but a voicemail. I’d take “sharpie on a dirty napkin delivered by carrier pigeon to my island vacation” over voicemails. I can’t flag voicemails for later. And also, we have this cool new feature where you can see missed calls. I do not need a voicemail just saying “Hey its Bob, call me back.”
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
Front is helping COVID-19 responders communicate better and faster. Find out how one such team, Covid Act Now, is helping leaders decide when to reopen.
There was a lot of pushback on this, discussion about how big a risk was that really anyway, people saying that John could word his out of office in such a way that people didn’t have to know he was actually away, and if something really was an emergency people would like to know that they have the opportunity to “direct queries to Sam or Dean” so they could be actioned, or make the judgement call that something could wait for John to return.
Otherwise, a referral to your company’s general contact email or a simple ‘I’ll respond when I get back, stop bugging me’ should do the trick.
I could see the benefit if someone needed to ask something before they left. It seems courteous?
Creativity is thinking outside the inbox when it comes to email marketing, and this email took it way too seriously, for good. Instead of assigning a task to the receiver, this auto-reply asks the sender to complete a survey on which is the best flick from the Die Hard franchise. Any Bruce Wills fan here? Let us know your choice in the comments!