The weather has changed, so I have decided to book myself a little break in the sunshine.
I was recently on the receiving end of a very perplexing out of office message. It simply said, “I am currently out of the office.” No indication of when they would be back or who to contact in the meantime. Fortunately in my case this was someone I cc’ed on an email as an FYI and did not need any response from, but still–who does that? IMO a good out of office message says how long you’re out and who to contact in the interim if things can’t wait, no more and no less.
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I will be checking email throughout the day and will try to respond to messages promptly (please flag urgent.
Thank you very much for your email. Currently, I cannot answer your msg promptly. I will come back to you after my return on Nov 10th.
5. Internal out of office reply template. An internal reply can use slightly more informal language but should not be too casual. Remember that any employee, including management, will be able to see this auto response if they email you.
I am the LW! It’s interesting, having Alison type out the OOO reply comes across less condescending than how it did in video. I’m sure it works for their office but it also says a lot, potentially, about their culture that she’d need to write something out like that in the first place! Usually “I’m OOO from X to X, please contact X for (reason)” should suffice.
Education Details: 14. 12. 1. Entrepreneurs and salespeople probably laugh at the prospect of being "out of office" — or, at the very least, unavailable to their clients 24/7. But the thing is, no one can be in the office 100% of the time. Even if your "office" is as portable as your laptop. Logging off will happen to every one of us, whether you're on vacation example of automatic reply out of office
I used to work with someone who had a message telling people she only checked her email twice a day. You pretty much needed to call her if you needed anything outside of those times. (She worked in a remote office.) I think she had read one of those books on efficiency that recommended scheduled email time. But there were problems with this: 4. My department often had to email attachments or text to illustrate our questions/concerns. And we were on deadlines. Reading a page of text over the phone was not an efficient use of anyone’s time 5. She did outreach & was often out of the office on site visits, trainings, or travel to these places, but never ever set her OOO for these, because she was “working.” However, she was effectively not available to read emails from other staff until after hours on those days.
We used to do this at my old job in addition to OOO messages. I found it useful to know in advance how long people were going to be gone. There’s nothing more annoying than needing something urgently from the one person who can help and then getting an auto-response saying they’re out for the next 2 weeks.
Did you look at the comments on the TikTok? Because the overwhelming majority love it and are asking if her company is hiring. So it doesn’t seem like most people find it condescending even in video form.
Finally, if leaving a private mobile phone feels like revealing too much, you can instruct your customers to contact you via email with the “URGENT” referenced in its subject:
I know a lot of people who never vacation for more than a few days because the email backlog becomes incredibly stressful upon their return; this is one way to meaningfully combat that which is somewhat in the employee’s control.
I will be out of the office starting on (beginning date) and ending on (ending date).
The eternally mind-blowing story of the company-wide email, OoO messages, and reply-all autoresponders that took out a 30,000 employee university email server one summer, comes to mind here…
It’s common practice to prepare an email vacation autoresponder for when you are going to be away from work for a lengthy period of time. But in many cases that isn’t enough to give you – and those who may be wanting to reach you – peace of mind while you are gone.
Manage your customer's expectation by setting up eDesk to auto-respond to any messages that arrive when your offices are closed for a holiday. This help file will guide you through creating Out-Of-Office templates that will be sent automatically to customers during one-off office closures, such as during holiday periods. Before you start You’ll need to have access to Templates in your Settings in order to view, create and edit templates. If you don’t have access, you can request it from an Admin user within your business. Note: To find out about the other types of templates that eDesk supports, click here.
I am out of the office from January 14 to 20, with only limited access to my emails and voicemail. Please be informed that this mail hasn’t been forwarded. I’ll come back to you as soon as possible.