To successfully decompress, you know there are some odds and ends you need to tie up at work — specifically finding a way to communicate with your leads, clients, and coworkers that you’re not working, but you’re making sure their needs are taken care of.
People often forget the power of an out of office message. One could even start their own language, as shown below:
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A standard OOO responder email simply needs to inform the sender that you are out of the office and when to expect a response. Like this: Hi there, Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office until [date] and will have limited access to my email. If you require immediate assistance for any urgent matters, please contact [name] at [email] or [phone] in my absence. Best,
Same. I also have a version that is customer facing/external and one that is internal. My coworkers get a little more info.
So from [date] to [date], I am going to be laid out in the sun catching a tan and reading a book.
I’m mostly back in my actual office now, but I went with “away from my computer between X and Z” a couple of times and just straight up “I am on annual leave between X and Z” a couple of times.
Have you ever called a company’s support line just to be confronted with an unsympathetic and confusing attendant menu? Or tried to reach a representative, but pressing the “0” key does nothing?
While this sounds kind of onerous, I don’t think it’s actually a bad idea to say “I don’t have this info but I’ll get back to you when I find out” if it’s going to take a while.
I read it as coming from a person who was overly frustrated with their regular OOO being ignored. It’s one of my pet peeves – the OOO clearly says I’m not there and to contact Bob, yet the sender continues to reply, never contacts Bob, then blows up at me when I return that their work is delayed. I would love to be able to send something like this message in the letter but it wouldn’t fly at my office.
I often see people put public holiday notices in their email signatures a week or two in advance, especially where there are multiple affected dates in a row. We are a very date-dependent field, though.
“To the Robotics Corp office, this mail is to inform all the staff and employees that the office will be closed for a week on the occasion of Durga Puja. Through this mail also, I send holiday wishes for all the employees on a superb recreational holiday period. Have a happy holiday.”
In all seriousness, you've probably ended up here because you were looking for some inspiration on your out of office message. You saw that they can range from funny to outright sales-y to a serious teaching moment. There's a few other things we want to make sure you don't leave out of your next out of office reply. Here's our three rules for scratching out that next OOO:
That’s basically my OOO message also. I’ll admit, I haven’t checked my office phone in weeks for VM, because anyone internally (or externally with any brain) would IM or email, and any spam calls can just sit in my VM.
Thank you for your email. Your message is important to me and I will respond as soon as possible. Thank you!
I can just about see having two OOOs: one for the actual leave time, and one for the first day you are back in the office, so people are aware you are digging yourself out of the emails and to please call or IM if it is time-sensitive.
The professional voicemail greetings is the cornerstone of any good business. Not every voicemail recording is relevant to every situation. This guide is going to demonstrate some of the specific custom voicemail greeting examples for doctors, dentist, real estate agent, lawyers and other professionals.
I want to answer every question you could possibly have in my out of office message, because otherwise you’re going to text my personal number and disturb whatever I am out of the office for. NOPE.