Yes, me too. It’s a lifesaver. Although to be fair, Outlook announces the fact that you’ve got an OOO message going out with a big yellow banner, so it’s quite hard to miss.
I actually stopped changing my VM and out of office right before I left, bc I just did’nt care anymore lol. This was only one of a number of things that this company did that was bonkers.
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Q. Are there any departments or clinics on the Health Science Campus that will be closed during winter break?
Our offices will be closed today for the Queen’s birthday public holiday. Our team will be back in the office tomorrow morning from am. Enjoy your holiday!
This holiday out-of-office email is definitely on theme, if not a little passive aggressive. If you’re getting emails during the holidays, why not treat everything you receive that season like the present it is, and send a thank you note?
Thanks for explaining, that makes sense. To me, it seemed like a well-communicated coverage plan and I would have especially appreciated the setting of expectations on how soon I could expect a response so never would have even considered that to be condescending.
However, if you do choose to do this, make sure you actually follow through and do the thing you’re bragging about, unlike this New York Times reader who was just a bit too bold.
Professionally, I just try to be as boring as humanly possible, except in comments embedded in code.
“Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office and will have no access to email. I will respond to your emails when I return on [date], but it may take me one to two days to sift through the messages. I appreciate your patience while I’m out. If you require immediate attention, please contact [name].”
5. "Hello, [Person's name] is chasing new adventures and is no longer with [Company name]. Please forward all future requests to [New or interim person's name] at [phone number]. Thank you!"
You can contact my colleagues from our different departments regarding the following cases :
I wish I’d copied it, but once a co-worker in sales had an out of office that was long and rambling and talked about how she and her family were “going to visit Mickey.” I didn’t know what to make of it, especially since it could go to prospective clients.
Completely agree. I have also recently have seen multiple out of office messages that say something along the lines of, “Please be aware that I may be slow to respond to emails today.” If it’s that time-sensitive, why is it an email? Asynchronous communication tools shouldn’t be smashed into the roles of real-time ones, and vice versa.
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.
With these tips, you’ll be able to write your next auto-reply message, for holidays or other reasons.
Amanda works at HubSpot, and she came with a unique auto respondent that asked her contacts to guess where she is. To give background, she flew down to Boston to attend a Red Sox training game in the spring with her father. She chose to ask her contacts whether where they think she might be, and also this played some wonderful use of litotes here:
Here's a million-dollar question: how do you get people to do what you want them to? That's where Calls-to-Action (CTAs) come in.