16) I am currently out of the office and probably out-of-my-mind drunk. Enjoy your workweek.
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If there is an emergency, please email [email protected] and someone will contact you as soon as possible.
Ha! Maybe she was short-circuiting someone who would send an email and then come over to her desk 5 minutes later to “see if you got my email.”
Then, all that’s left to do is turn it on before you abandon your desk, and get prepared for a relaxing holiday break—without feeling the need to be constantly tethered to your inbox.
There are multiple ways to craft your out-of-office message, but there are a couple of standard best practices to follow that will ensure you don’t come back to angry or confused customers, coworkers, or vendors.
If you’re taking a sick leave, make them emphasize by describing how annoying your cold is. If you’re going on an adventure, tell your clients a little bit — just a little bit, don’t be bragging too much — about how excited you are to experience it. This will help build trust with your clients.
But the best OOO (actually, an autoreply) came from Ryan Reynolds – you know, the actor and gin company owner. If you emailed him, you got this (I think there were others too – this is the one I got): Thank you for your interest in Aviation American Gin! You’ve reached my Out Of Office Mission Statement.
Over Twitter DMs, one woman sent me her OOO messages from when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The messages — composed while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments and recovering from surgery — were detailed and unique. They offered touches of humor, honesty, details about her treatment schedules and set expectations for others trying to reach her. She offered alternative contact options for potential emailers to make sure urgent requests didn’t fall through the cracks but offered a dose or reality as well. I particularly appreciated this line:
Before each holiday or irregular business day that your office will be closed, follow this checklist to ensure your excellent customer service continues and your business remains safe throughout the closure.
I would be SUPER annoyed to get this! I agree it seems condescending and it’s just too long.
I’m so glad not to have to work at [insert company] any more that I am literally high on life.
In an instant, you feel a weight lifted from your shoulders, and a choir of angels sing Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy around you as you skip out of the office. You gaze upon the masses of workers on the tram, smugly wondering if their out-of-office responses are on yet.
One common challenge faced by customers is auto reply email or text messages lack a specification about the estimated wait time to get answers for their queries.
It’s my favorite time of year, which means I’m currently out of the office chugging mugs of cocoa, stuffing my face with cookies, and attempting to fulfill my life-long goal of memorizing every single line of [your favorite holiday movie].
Also, you need to know your audience if you are going to go eccentric. Alison mentions that this message is fine in their culture, but it wouldn’t npbe appropriate for my somewhat formal field. And even if your workplace in general is casual, you might be contacted by someone outside. (In a tiny provincial courthouse I served in the past, there is a story going around that in the 80s a junior but elderly clerk used to address phone callers as hun and sweetheart and generally speak very informally. Most people thought it was funny, and then the President of Supreme Court called and… he didn’t).
7. Out of office lead generation and content promotion templates. As with email signatures, out of office messages can be used for lead generation purposes and promoting new content.