There are multiple ways to craft your out-of-office message, but there are a couple of standard best practices to follow that will ensure you don’t come back to angry or confused customers, coworkers, or vendors.
There was a lot of pushback on this, discussion about how big a risk was that really anyway, people saying that John could word his out of office in such a way that people didn’t have to know he was actually away, and if something really was an emergency people would like to know that they have the opportunity to “direct queries to Sam or Dean” so they could be actioned, or make the judgement call that something could wait for John to return.
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Dear Customer, Our office is closed and you can expect to hear back from me by [date]. Have a great holiday! Regards [Name/signature]
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If you require immediate assistance, please email [email protected] in my absence. Thanks.
However, I will be taking periodic breaks from binge-watching everything I’ve missed to check my email [once per day/every evening/occasionally] while I’m away.
Our office will remain closed for Christmas. We assure you that all your emails will be answered as soon as we return to the office.
I would be SUPER annoyed to get this! I agree it seems condescending and it’s just too long.
The vice-chancellor of [X] University is extremely pleased to announce the winter vacations from the 25th of December to the 6th of January 20XX. All the offices of the University Campus enclosed for the said period. Have a safe holiday and enjoy the break.
I do this when I’m on personal vacations. When I’m doing field work for research, I do tend to add a statement that I won’t have access to email/phone because I’m doing field work in X location.
When one of my colleagues is out of the office, he doesn’t mess around. In fact, he’s turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary from fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.
Then there was the occasional one who would do what Alison mentioned with the sickness excuses, and create a tale that read like a police report: “I must miss my deadline because, on the night of August 12, my 45-year-old sister was alone in her house when an intruder entered. He was a 6’1″ caucasian male wearing a black balaclava and carrying a candlestick. As my sister approached him, with the dog barking around her heels, she heard a distant car crash which led her to have a fatal … etc.” (This is not an actual excuse I received, just similar in detail to some of those that were submitted.) These ones I was pretty sure were a writing exercise, requiring time and effort that could have been put to better use on the actual assignment they had been given.
Businesses rely on delivering excellent examples of automated reply messages to manage customer expectations and make them feel valued. However, it is recommended to follow the key ideas for creating professional auto reply messages to provide instant communication.
In conclusion, an eager customer trying his or her best to reach out to you is the last person you want to disappoint. Make their day special with an unexpected or quirky autoresponder email that your customers wouldn’t have thought they’d see in their inbox in a million years.
It also doesn’t help that gmail has no ability to create an OOO schedule… like why can’t I have gmail turn on the message every day at 5pm, and turn it off every morning at 8am? We have the technology!
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Setting up an out of office message in Gmail is simple. First, (1) put the message you wrote in the text box and format it properly. Then (2) choose a schedule for your auto-replies. If you know by which date you’re going to get back to the office, you can put that day in. Gmail will then automatically stop sending out auto-replies when the time comes. If you don’t know when you’re going to return you can leave it empty. Out of office replies can also be (3) manually toggled on or off at any time.