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.
My favorite thing is setting my OOO to only run for a specific amount of time. I will absolutely forget to turn it off if I have to do it manually, but we can just set a date/time range for it to start/stop. So I usually start it around 4 pm the day before and end it at 7 or 8pm the night before I return.
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I’ve started going really, really simple on OOO messages – literally just “I’ll be out of the office until ___, please contact ___ for questions about ____”
I actually hate that feature – I LOVE manually updating it myself but I know most of my coworkers benefit from having it that way.
Hey, Thanks for your email. I’m not in the office and am on a family vacation. I assure you that all your emails will be answered as soon as I return to the office on [date]. Kind regards.
By now, your neighbourhood supermarket is probably already blasting the classic Christmas tunes, your favourite colleagues are on vacation many miles away, and you’re counting down the days till you get to clear your annual leave 😏
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Between now and then, I recommend escaping the summer heat with a delicious Aviation & Tonic. Here’s my recipe:
You must pay close attention to signs of negative language or tendencies to sound monotonous. Instead, you can use simple, everyday vocabulary to convey your message.
This is something I recommend doing only after you understand the dynamics of your workplace and your clientele. If it falls under the “okay” category, this unapologetically real out of office email can be a talking point when you return to your cubicle. It’s a short, simple, and sweet yet savage email. You can tweak the wording to write a bit of a diplomatic message based on your organization.
70% of local searches online result in a phone call; In 2014, 80% of callers sent to voicemail said they do not leave messages because they don’t think they’ll even be heard. If you want your voicemail greeting to work for you and not against you, it’s …
Top of the iceberg though. Oh, and she also works with external contacts, including prospective clients.
3. Suggest Reading the Documentation. This is the office closed for holiday template that our support team uses. If you have an extensive documentation published on your site, you can recommend users to read the documentation while you get back to your users.
7. No Specific Dates Out of Office Reply. [Your Greeting] Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office and not able to respond to your email personally.
Anything worded like Option 1 would never fly at my workplace, exactly because of this. I have colleagues who complain to upper management if their non-urgent tech support questions (that a whole troubleshooting website already answers) don’t get an answer from me or my boss within half a day. And oh, did I mention our job is not actually tech support?
Thanks for your email. I’m currently out of the office, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
As with a regular cold email, the best way to utilize your out of office message is to offer something of value to your client. So if you’re taking a vacation right after the launch of your newest feature or after finishing up on that huge blog post, linking to them may prove to be a very good idea. Explain why that content is useful and the person who contacted you about their thoughts.