Please note I am currently out of the office, please reach out to [email protected] for any kind of assistance.
19. "Hello, you've reached [your name]. I'm currently [exploring Asia, hiking through the jungle in Costa Rica, hanging out on the beach in Bermuda] — or more likely, [recovering from extreme jet lag, googling ‘Are red spiders poisonous,' or looking for SPF 150 sunscreen] and won't be back in the office until [date]. Leave your contact info and reason for calling and I'll get in touch then."
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The reason for the OOOs for staff taking half-days? They didn’t want to check the shared office calendar where our time off was recorded. UGH
Seriously, literally, anything but a voicemail. I’d take “sharpie on a dirty napkin delivered by carrier pigeon to my island vacation” over voicemails. I can’t flag voicemails for later. And also, we have this cool new feature where you can see missed calls. I do not need a voicemail just saying “Hey its Bob, call me back.”
Ha reminds me of an admin here once who would leave like 10 bullet points on who to contact for what. We got a kick out of the point that was “for catering emergencies…contact…”.
Yes. We do it that way in part because someone might be at a satellite office but out of OUR office and still be able to access emails, OR they might be completely offline at the beach. Saying you’re not answering emails can be helpful.
After one negative service experience, 51% of customers will never do business with that company again. Hence, delivering excellent service is the most important part of customer retention strategies. Auto reply messages are the best ways to maintain a transparent connection with your clientele.
Oh my gosh, yes! This also drives me crazy. The game of emailing 15 people because they are all out and pointing to each other as their back up. Infuriating.
What Should Your Vacation Message Include?A subject, with the dates you leave and returnWho to contact in an emergency (name, email, and phone number)Point of contact for non-urgent inquiries (name, email, and phone number)Keep Your Message Professional
Optionally, set a date range for your automatic replies. This will turn off automatic replies at the date and time you enter for the end time. Otherwise, you'll need to turn off automatic replies manually.
It’s up to you whether you want to explicitly state that you’ve been furloughed. If you’re working at a company or industry where a sizable portion of the workforce has been furloughed, it might be confusing not to say so. You might write:
IDK, I try to change my OOO if I’m out for a day. It might not be completely necessary, but I’d rather inform people, and it doesn’t happen often enough to be annoying for me.
We also had to reply to any emails we received within 4 hours. Even if we didn’t have an answer.
I’m on vacation until July 18th. If you need to reach me, here’s what you’ll need to do: First, travel to my homeland of Florida. Climb to the highest peak of the tallest mountain. Find a rare flower (no specifics, of course... It’d be cheating). Put the flower back, because as the old hiking rule goes, “Leave everything as you found it.”
One of the most important tasks is to set up an auto-response system that notifies your
I usually put my boss in my OOO, because if something is so urgent that it needs to be delegated RIGHT NOW then it’s urgent enough that my boss should know about it, and he’s also in the best position to know who on the team to delegate it to based on everyone’s workloads and what can be dropped. But the most likely result is that whoever is emailing me either waits for me to get back because it’s not that urgent or goes to the next/backup person based on our central documentation about who to contact for particular issues.
If you don't see the Automatic Replies button, follow the steps to use rules to send an out of office message. Set up an automatic reply