Something that actually was an issue with my employer ages ago: at one time there was a policy that out of office would only go to internal people, and nothing would be sent at all to anyone external. Apparently this was felt necessary in order to mitigate risk of burglary, so people wouldn’t know that “John Winchester has gone on a hunting trip” and that his house was empty.
Education Details: I will be checking my voicemail messages periodically, so please leave me a message and I will return your call as soon as possible. If you need immediate assistance, please contact my assistant, Suzy Jones at 1-800-555-1212 extension 6336. Hi, this is Jim Smith. I will be out of the office and returning Monday, April 21.
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Our office will be closed today for the [holiday name]. We will reopen tomorrow morning at [time].
My OOO replies are relatively boring…usually state if I’m using PTO or at a conference, dates, who to bother in my place, etc.
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I’ll return on [date] or after I watch [favourite holiday movie] one too many times (whichever comes first)—and will respond to your message at that time.
There are two ways to send automatic out-of-office replies. The way you use depends on the type of email account you have.
But I'm someone who has co-workers in almost every time zone, on almost every continent, and in almost every geographic region, and I simply can't imagine using most of these examples with co-workers in, say, South Korea or Japan or Nicaragua. Like, the account manager who reaches out to me for help accessing a particular system in Seoul doesn't need my personal story about why I'm taking time off and all the fun (or, for that matter, not fun) things that I'll be doing — they need help gaining access to [system] in order to complete the job tasks that have been assigned to them. If I am not available to help them, they need to know who can, and if there just *isn't* anyone else who can perform this task, they need to know when I will be able to.
I personally like it. Of course, the emails that I’ve seen still say what to do if the matter is urgent and needs to be handled now — but as a person who gets 100+ emails a day, whether I tell you I’m deleting all of them when I get back or not — if it is in the thousands of emails that might accumulate in the time I am off, I’m not going to see it or respond. Better that I tell you now that you are going to have to resend the email after I return (or get my backup to handle it now) than you sit around waiting for a response that is never going to come. It is actually pretty common in my industry for any absence two weeks or more.
Dear Customer, Please note that on [day], [date], is [holiday name]. The store will be closed all day and will open again at [time] on [Day]. Enjoy the holiday. Regards [Company name]
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I say “thanks for your message” because it feels to brusque without a greeting – but I can see it either way.
I work with such a person. So instead of something like “I’m writing to ask if you would graciously consider serving on our committee”, she will send a message along the lines of: “I am graciously writing to ask you to serve on our committee.”
We sent a message from the Android phone to the iPhone number that has already been set in vacation settings. And finally, we received an auto-reply text from iPhone to the Android phone.
Don’t be afraid to use a pop cultural reference that the audience would recognize. Instead of bemoaning your absence, they’ll have something fun and familiar to laugh at.
The best voicemail greeting I’ve ever encountered went like this: “If you’re hearing this message, please hang up and send me a text. I haven’t checked my voicemail since 2010.” And true to form, the mailbox was full and not accepting messages at that time. I appreciated her honesty!