I saw a version of this on IG that was an old school (paper) OOO from an associate pastor. It has a line like “if this is an emergency and you must speak to someone, Jesus is always available on the mainline.” Too funny.
A retired small town newspaper guy once told me about the first time the publisher went on vacation and left him in charge (this would have been in the 80s). The publisher told him “Don’t call me unless the building burns down, and even then, don’t call me until the fire is out.” Good example of management setting vacation expectations.
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But despite these (fantastic) suggestions, the number one rule for choosing your out of office is that it reflects who you are as a person. Don’t change for anyone, especially not your auto-responder.
In conclusion, an eager customer trying his or her best to reach out to you is the last person you want to disappoint. Make their day special with an unexpected or quirky autoresponder email that your customers wouldn’t have thought they’d see in their inbox in a million years.
A ‘Type A’ who can’t ever fully switch-off from work… at least they’re honest about it!
Hey — you’ve reached my inbox, but hold on, the doorbell just rang. It’s the UPS driver. He’s loading me onto the truck. Dang, it’s stuffy in this truck with all these boxes. He’s taking me down to… Oh! Florida! And now I’m on the beach. Thanks, UPS driver!
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Whether you prefer to keep it simple or have a little fun with your OOO message, it’s always essential to include the basics so you don’t have a mountain of emails to respond to when you get back. Then, all there’s left to do is stay out of your inbox and enjoy your vacation fully!
Thanks for writing! You can expect a response to your note in 1-2 business days. While you’re waiting—surprise! Here’s something I made for you: [Include a worksheet, tool, video, blog post, checklist, resource list, or whatever you’d like!] I hope [name of thing] makes your day a little brighter and easier. Thanks for your patience, and talk to you soon!
And if you suspect that you won’t look through all those emails that cluttered up your inbox while you were on a vacation at all? Be honest about it and tell your prospects to contact you again at a certain date.
Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office and into the cookies and eggnog right now. I’m celebrating the holidays with my loved ones and will not be checking my email until [return date].
Oh, this reminds me of the best out of office I ever received. It was three years ago, but it was so funny I saved it. All of it was gold but the sign-off was “Hoping that you are at least a little bit jealous (why else should I go on vacations to begin with?), I remain truly Yours, etc”.
Ugh, I wouldn’t mind changing daily if I could have a couple of prepared responses for normal circumstances (i.e.: “I’ve left for the day, but I’ll be back in the office tomorrow morning to return your call”) to select from, but having to create a new message for Tuesday night when the info for Monday night is the same? Rage inducing. Email is asynchronous, you KNOW you’re not going to get an instant reply and sometimes you email knowing fully well that it won’t be seen until the next morning/week/whatever. Why on earth mandate an auto-reply for that?
> When I get an answer from someone who reads his e-mails on vacation I’m pleasantly surprised.
You are hereby informed that a large number of our company workers are going to take their days off due to extreme weather conditions prevailing in the city. Due to this, there would be much difficulty in coming and going so it is a mutual decision from the heads of our office to make it closed from 25-12-20XX to 02-01-20XX. This temporary closure will result in delayed answers to your queries, so these will be answered right after the opening of our office. All the delays are regretted.
That is kind of glorious. And it does make sense when the person you’re emailing is gone for months. I did something similar my last mat leave except I didn’t explicitly state it, and lo and behold, people figured out that I wasn’t going to catch their email from a month or so earlier unless they brought it up again.
To set an automatic reply for contacts outside your company, select Outside My Organization > Auto-reply to people outside my organization, type in a message, and select OK.