I had a coworker that (pre-covid) had an out of office set up any time she worked from home. She didn’t operate any differently than when she was in the office, and there wasn’t any information in the message, just “FYI I’m wfh today”. It was weird to keep getting those messages, since her working from home had zero effect on your correspondence with her.
An out of office message could become an opportunity to connect with your client on a more personal level. Consider sharing something about yourself that they might not have known about while working with you.
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The hours in your signature is a great idea! I’m about to have a non-standard work schedule to accommodate medical appointments. Totally stealing this idea!
Website: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/professional-voicemail-greeting
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5. It’s not all about Christmas, Cyber Monday, or Black Friday. When referring to the holidays, you might be thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, or maybe Hanukkah.
Hah! Maternity/parental leave is often 1 year here, so there is zero expectation you will read or “catch up” afterwards. We keep our email addresses during where I work (Canadian government), so it’s standard to put an OOO that just says “on parental leave. Please contact X instead” with no reference to actually reviewing any of those emails, and often not even a projected date of return since people often flex their return date or take extra time, or just return to a different position entirely (out of choice).
Email is one of the top tools for business communication. People expect swift responses to their requests. If this expectation will not be met because you are away from your desk, your client or colleague needs to know.
I pretty much never pay attention to out of office replies, just note if there is one. If I really need something urgently I’ll look to see if there’s another person’s contact info, but it’s rarely that urgent. I might also look for a return date, if that matters to me. It would annoy me if I had to wade through a wall of text to find either of those things.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s had experiences in the past with people not getting an immediate answer then upping the urgency–we’ve had letters about such coworkers here. There’s an email, then a followup email, then a chat message, then a phone call, then they walk over, all within ten minutes of the initial email.
By completing these items, you alleviate any concerns that may arise during your closure. This also ensures your business continues providing transparency to your customers. No misunderstandings.
Website: https://smith.ai/blog/28-business-voicemail-greetings-for-main-office-and-personal-numbers-formal-informal-modern-and-just-hilarious
“Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office and will have no access to email. I will respond to your emails when I return on [date], but it may take me one to two days to sift through the messages. I appreciate your patience while I’m out. If you require immediate attention, please contact [name].”
So now this email is working overtime with the flood of enquiries, spam, well-wishes, and broken hearts.
That’s the simple structure of a voicemail greeting. Overall, your greeting should be professional, but the wording can vary depending on the situation. Check out a sample below.
My department still doesn’t allow us to send OOO auto-replies to external recipients because of one incident years ago (a customer tried to contact a sales rep about an urgent order, got the rep’s auto-reply, and in their ensuing panic, somehow got escalated all the way up to the company president). Any external emails we get are auto-forwarded to a centralized mailbox and (ostensibly) handled by another rep while we are out. It bothers me to know that my external contacts won’t get a reponse from me while I’m out and may think I’m just ignoring them.
“When I got there and found out the bungee was 134 feet high I got terrible cold feet, but I felt that since I wrote it, I had to do it. So I did. It was terrifying and indeed a lesson on making bold claims in a public way!”