Home/Blog/Closing your office for Christmas? Holiday checklist everyone must read!
A well-deserved holiday deserves a substantial out-of-office message that really hammers home the fact that they’re still working, while you’re off on your travels – nice and descriptive to really paint the picture!
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Most people don’t give this a second thought, but you could potentially be putting your company at serious risk. In the wrong hands this information can open the door for phishing attacks and financial fraud.
Anybody that might need me that quickly should have access to my calendar and can see I’m in a meeting. Anybody that can’t see my calendar shouldn’t expect a reply in an hour unless I’d said I’d be available or something.
Businesses that send autoresponder messages need to ensure that they provide alternative contact options. The automated email responses or text messages should clearly mention what way customers can reach out to the business.
At the top of your calendar, click the first date you’ll be out of the office. Click Out of office. Select the dates that you’ll be out of the office. Optional: Update the time range and edit your decline message. Click Save.
Witty and funny out of office messages are great, but check out how New York Times' VP of Operations, Erin Grau, uses her out of office response for parental leave as a teachable moment. That's a powerful message about something she feels passionate and connected to.
The following examples and text ideas can be used for almost any kind of holiday / vacation messages. You can switch the language of the text blocks by pressing the tab button.
An avid reader, eclectic writer, blogger, and content writer by profession at REVE Chat, Snigdha Patel endeavors assiduously to understand complex support channels and provide information regarding them through comprehensive blog posts.
You don’t have to stop using OOO messages. Instead, they need to be used wisely. It’s okay to suggest an alternate contact while you are unavailable or add a date when you will be back in action. Just skip the details about why you set up the out of office message. No one needs to know that your son is getting married in Paris. Remove any personal details in that message, including personal cell phone numbers or an alternate email where you can temporarily be reached.
Businesses can create offline messages in REVE Chat to keep their customers informed about their business hours and guide them towards getting a faster response.
If it’s anything less than a business day, it just becomes this extra beacon of our completely toxic and out of whack work culture that insists we be reachable every second.
Hoo boy, have I got some PTSD from Old Job about out of office autoreplies. Exboss was such a stickler for them and actually enforced her expectations as official policy. Meaning if you didn’t do it to her exact specs, she’d call you back to the office to do it (which no one did) and read you the riot act afterwards while threatening to write you up for insubordination. She demanded them any time that we were away from our desk for longer than 30 minutes and for anything other than a meeting. So training in the conference room down the hall, a work lunch with teammates, leaving an hour early for an appointment, arriving late for an appointment, even working from home, all required OOO alerts.
Usually, you have the option ready, and all you have to do is go to your email settings. Once you are there, you will see something like Automatic Replies, or even Out of office AutoReply, as it is with Gmail:
Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, I’m out of the office from [day/month] to [day/month] with limited/ no access to email. If your question can wait, I’ll be responding to any emails I miss when I return. If not, contact [Name] at [email] or [phone] and he/she will take care of your request.
Let’s be real, the majority of the thousands of emails you return to after being O.O.O. will be spam and salesy marketing drivel – any legitimately important emails will probably get lost! Unless you’re Barack Obama, just send it when they’re back.
That’s so weird! Email is the correct way to reach a teleworking person, that’s the worst place for an OOO message. Stick an OOO sign on your physical office door, by all means!