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I guess it’s relatively minor, but I once emailed a local government official with a question about building permits (just as a citizen, not work-related) at about 10am on a Monday and got an out-of-office reply stating she’d be back “Monday” with no date. So I had no idea whether she was already back and hadn’t turned off the message yet, in which case, not urgent, I’ll wait, or was out for a week, in which case, I’d like to ask someone else. Not a big inconvenience, but it was so illogical not to give a date that it really drove me crazy
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Pro tip: The first works well for both voicemail greetings and email responders, while the next two are most appropriate for emails.
Q. Will Supply Chain, Purchasing, Receiving, Mail Services and other such departments be open during winter break?
The main goal of an auto-respond email is to ensure clarity of communication expectations and offer appropriate alternatives.
After all, a professional voicemail recording boosts your credibility, makes you seem more competent, and encourages whoever's listening to it to continue the relationship.
I’ve honestly considered changing my OOO message/voicemail to “You’ve reached Lisa. I’m overwhelmed right now, so I’ll get back to you eventually.”
PHONE PLUS Holiday Greetings. Adding the Holiday Greeting messages to your PHONE PLUS system will enable you to inform callers immediately when you are closed during holidays. For a one-time investment of only $299, we’ll load all your messages in advance into your system & you can select which MAIN greeting you want playing.
This workaround will take care of auto-reply messages for phone calls and messages to the iPhone. There are a lot of users using iCloud emails on iPhone and Mac. You can set a vacation auto-reply on the iCloud email account. Let’s see how to set automatic vacation messages on iCloud email.
In addition to existing holiday pay, UToledo will provide enough additional paid days off to eligible employees, as indicated in the schedule below. For additional details, please review the Official UToledo Winter Break Policy.
Some of my coworkers have started putting “Thank you for your email” at the beginning of their out of office replies. Management loves it, but I think it’s too ingratiating and I cringe when I read it. These are junior-level staffers, so maybe it makes sense in that context? Anyway, I refuse to put that in my out of office messages.
I work for a Japanese company which has a regular rotation of engineers who come over for 2-4 years so we get some enjoyable translations for all manner of communication.
Please note: Shipment cutoff times on December 22nd will be at 2pm MST. Regular shipment schedules will continue on Tuesday, December 27th.
Does your company publish blogs or offer downloadable ebooks, reports, or case studies? If so, add a P.S. to the end of your vacation message linking your readers to some content they can learn from or engage with.
Rather than sounding like a boring email robot, you could add a funny tone to your letter. Use a GIF or a meme to joke about what you’re doing on vacation, but remember not to go overboard.
The season of good cheer is upon us and you can feel the anticipation in the air. Most of us will be taking at least some vacation, and we all want to get the most out of our time away. So before you re-post your standard out-of-office reply, stop and ask yourself: will the way you’ve written the message really help you do just that?
It’s possible I might quote from some responses to this in an upcoming column, so please note if you don’t want me to do that with yours!