Thanks for your message! I’m currently buried in snow and will get back to you once I’ve defrosted on January 2nd.
Voice mail is a strictly worse medium than almost any alternative. You don’t get the opportunity to converse and ask questions back and forth like you do with a phone call; you can’t extract information efficiently from the message like you can with an email (the old “ugh, I have to listen to this entire message over again just to check one thing he said at the end” scenario).
.
If those weren’t bad enough, if anyone on that lists sets up an out-of-office message, it *automatically* replies all. If the email bounces back, it bounces back reply all. One guy left the company and his email had a permanent out-of-office auto reply. The list was quite busy for a month or so and the message popped up multiple times a day.
Being out-of-office on maternity leave can range from less than 12 weeks to 6 months or more, this is entirely dependent on where you work or live. Considering the time you'll be out of the office, you need to direct people that send in emails to the employee who would be handling your tasks while you're away. Hello, Thank you for your email. Please note that I will be away on maternity leave from June 18 to January 11. During this period, my accounts will be handled by our assistant sales manager, John Doe. You can reach him at [email protected] or call him on 123-456-7890. Regards, Juliet Tailor Sales Manager 6. Temporary Out-of-Office Email on Medical Leave
We are closed on [your business' closed days]. Please leave us a message with your name, number, and any other necessary information, and we will return your call when the office reopens. Thank you for calling." As you can see, this professional voicemail greeting is similar to the absent receptionist greeting but more inclusive.
In 2013, researcher danah boyd wrote a LinkedIn blog post advocating for the nuclear option which was framed in the piece as an “email sabbatical.” Coming back to an empty inbox after a vacation is should be a break from the insanity, not a procrastination of it,” boyd wrote of the decision to send everything to the trash.
Very true, if the options came in reverse order (or maybe emergency first followed by not-urgent followed by urgent) that would be a little better.
“I’m not in the office. I’m spending time with my children and that’s far more important than absolutely anything you could be after”
Apparently it’s a thing where people say in their out of office that they do not intend to read any emails that came in when they were out and your email will be deleted. If you still need assistance you need to resend your email after the person’s return date. While I get it, I’ve been in those positions where you get over 100 emails a day and if you are going to be out and unplugged for a week or more, trying to wade through all the junk and find the stuff that actually needs your attention, I do find this…rude? I don’t know the word I would use, but I have a negative reaction to it.
If you are reading this, it is because John Whatsisname cannot help you – he has left the company and no longer uses this email address.
Part of me would really appreciate an OOO that says, “I can’t get back to you today because I’m out robbing a bank.” Part of me would dread that, because I’d probably become that person’s court-appointed attorney.
The good news is, automating text messages is as simple to set up as a pre-recorded voicemail prompt or an out of office email reply. We’ll show you how it’s done and share some ideas for how you can leverage the power of automation.
I have no idea how to update my voicemail message and I don’t actually know what it says. I occasionally get voicemails that are automatically forwarded to my email as sound files but I don’t think I have ever had a business related voicemail land there (it is rare that I get calls from outside the company and most people in the company if they can’t reach me on the phone will IM me directly–we use Teams for both phone and messaging).
Erin Ollila is a content strategist and writer who believes in the power of words and how a message can inform — and even transform — its intended audience. Reach out to her on Instagram at @ErinOllila, or visit her website erinollila.com.
Not an out of office reply but a voicemail greeting: at a previous job I called someone and her voicemail greeting said that she would be out of the office from Day – Day and that her voicemail wasn’t accepting messages during that time, click! The time in question was six months prior. Plenty of people she worked with and for could have called her on it and apparently had not, so she just … didn’t get voicemails. Like, that was not a way you could communicate with her.
It seems that yoga pants are taking over our closets these days, replacing jeans, slacks…
Terms of UseAbout the BBCPrivacy PolicyCookiesAccessibility HelpParental GuidanceContact the BBCGet Personalised NewslettersWhy you can trust the BBCAdvertise with usAdChoices / Do Not Sell My Info