After all, a professional voicemail recording boosts your credibility, makes you seem more competent, and encourages whoever's listening to it to continue the relationship.
Here’s my pet peeve: OOOs that specifically state the person “won’t have access to email.” It contributes to this pervasive idea that an employee who might technically be ABLE to check her work email while OOO better have a damn good reason why she won’t be doing so. Which calls back to the reason someone’s OOO is no one else’s business. Whether you’re OOO because you’re on your honeymoon, having your gall bladder removed, or robbing a bank, OOO should automatically imply unavailability for work stuff. Full stop.
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Even the most blunt Out Of Office responders can still offer some levity or can at least entertain. If you’re looking to spice up your OOO, try this wonderful Wikipedia OOO generator that Melody Joy Kramer and Alex Hollender built. It auto-generates an OOO response with either a link or a quote pulled from Wikipedia. It’s a cool little project and a nice starter template for you when you decide to tell everyone to buzz off and leave you alone for a bit.
I’ll return on [date] or after I watch [favorite holiday movie] one too many times (whichever comes first)—and will respond to your message at that time.
Perhaps I’m you guys’ worst nightmare, but for the past couple of years I’ve been writing haikus for my OOO, which give a flavour of what I’m out doing. A couple of examples:
A simple greeting like, 'Season's Greetings,' or 'Happy Holidays," is appropriate, followed by, 'I hope the season is treating you well. I wanted to thank you for your business this year and wish you and your team a Happy New Year. ' A sign-off of, 'Regards' or 'Best wishes,' is inclusive and business-friendly. What's a good out of office message?
Even if it’s for a short amount of time, an autoresponder helps you enjoy your time off from work.
Over Twitter DMs, one woman sent me her OOO messages from when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The messages — composed while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments and recovering from surgery — were detailed and unique. They offered touches of humor, honesty, details about her treatment schedules and set expectations for others trying to reach her. She offered alternative contact options for potential emailers to make sure urgent requests didn’t fall through the cracks but offered a dose or reality as well. I particularly appreciated this line:
The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:
You can include the range of dates that you will be away, but ultimately the sender wants to know when they can reach you again.
We’re not saying you’re boring but you do work in a fairly serious corporate environment. As a result, your out of office needs to be quite to the point but you also like to throw in a little pitch too, you cheeky sod.
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Brief Out of Office Message. While it’s vital that you get the main points across in any vacation email, brevity is important. If you’re looking for something a little more to-the-point, try this one
Website: https://www.aains.com/aains_com/assets/File/agents/news-flashes/en/09_07_15_Holiday Hours.pdf
Note: The following steps are for users with a Microsoft Exchange account. If you don’t see the words, “Connected to: Microsoft Exchange” at the bottom of your Outlook window, check out our article on how to set up out of office in Outlook with an IMAP/POP3 account.
You’ve reached Michael Abioye’s inbox. This is a general notice informing you of Michael Abioye’s absence until January 2nd, 20XX. He is currently partaking in the traditions of a certain holiday, which may or may not be denominational or non-denominational. Example Company is in no way endorsing or not endorsing said holiday, nor encouraging or discouraging employees of all demographics to engage in celebratory activities. Thank you for your consideration during this festive or not-festive time.
7.) Welcome to the law office John Doe. Sorry, we're currently unable to answer your call personally, as you call during our annual holidays. Feel free to send us an email to [email protected] - We will contact as soon as possible at our return. In urgent cases, please contact our office representative. These can be found on our website www.lawoffice-johndoe.de. Many thanks for your call - Good bye.