Readers, what do you like and hate in out-of-offices replies? Any stories of particularly off-key ones?
Here is a good example of setting a queue message when all your support agents are busy.
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I hate to break it to you, but I’m on annual leave until [end date] and will have limited access to my emails until then.
Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the store on holidays, with no access to email. I will be returning on (insert date).
I had a coworker that (pre-covid) had an out of office set up any time she worked from home. She didn’t operate any differently than when she was in the office, and there wasn’t any information in the message, just “FYI I’m wfh today”. It was weird to keep getting those messages, since her working from home had zero effect on your correspondence with her.
I usually put my boss in my OOO, because if something is so urgent that it needs to be delegated RIGHT NOW then it’s urgent enough that my boss should know about it, and he’s also in the best position to know who on the team to delegate it to based on everyone’s workloads and what can be dropped. But the most likely result is that whoever is emailing me either waits for me to get back because it’s not that urgent or goes to the next/backup person based on our central documentation about who to contact for particular issues.
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I follow this TikTok account and she has a TON of these. I think it’s a culture thing. It would be inappropriate in many places but clearly it isn’t there.
Having a professional automated message when you are busy enough to answer customer queries right away can set the right tone for your business and inform customers when they can expect to receive the response.
At my old job we had a short script for our voice mail messages including whether we were in the office or out of the office. We were specifically told not to say why we were out of the office for personal privacy and protection reasons. However, an exception was soon made–for jury duty. Callers were getting freaked out when they got the message “I’m out of the office and don’t know when I will return.” They would be worried about the person they were calling and worried about whether or not they would be able to get the info they needed. So if on jury duty we would say, “I’m out of the office on jury duty and don’t know when I will return.”
How about warning people of what’s to come? Take a look at an example you can use below.
For comparison my current (not great) boss sent an out of office recently detailing how he would be out because he was on his personal sail boat all day, sailing from vacation destination X back to our port city. At length. In a pandemic. When we all had our wages frozen at the start of the crisis.
Give them the dates. Don't leave your sender guessing. Let them know when you'll be out and the date you'll be back in the office — not when you're returning home.
My colleague does that just for holidays.. it does say who else to contact, but tbh if I’m emailing him a couple of days before he’s due to return then I’m not massively impressed at the insinuation I should take the action of remembering to resend it… in reality I think he probably does read *some* emails but clearly views the OOO as a way to absolve responsibility if he misses something..
I’m with you. It comes across as a bit scold-y, like chastising someone for emailing while you’re out and treating them as if their issues aren’t important.
Oh, that’s maddening. I just checked Outlook, and it doesn’t look like you can set up a rule not to send OOO replies to a particular person, but you can reply with a template. I wonder if sending just your boss a message that says “Hi boss, this is an automated reply that I set up a rule to send. I’m really out of the office and I really didn’t see this message. See you when I get back on Monday!” or whatever. Probably won’t help, but might be fun.
Education Details: Here's the perfect out-of-office message for when you're only taking one day off and really want to unplug—whether on your own or because of a major holiday. The Out-of-Office Template You Need When You’re Only Taking One Day Off. by. he also writes test prep and higher education marketing content for The Economist.