OMG. When I was in college, my mom got me a summer job at her office. All I did was send faxes, get faxes back, and put dates in a spreadsheet.
Here are some samples and templates of automatic reply messages across various scenarios.
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Q. As an employee or faculty member, will I be able to use our on-campus recreation facilities during winter break?
› Url: https://www.themuse.com/advice/6-outofoffice-templates-for-the-holidays-that-you-can-copy-and-paste-now Go Now
I might sound nitpicky but the language is important. “Might” or “may be” or “slower than usual” are vague and don’t offer the sender all that much information about when you’re really going to respond to them. Worse, they do a horrible job of protecting the time of the email receiver who, as the responder notes, is not in the office! Such a responder implies that, not only will the vacationer reply to the email, but they may not even miss a beat. They may be slow to respond, but they also might not.
I’ll be sure to reply to your message when I wade through my inbox upon my return. If your message is time sensitive, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email].
Of course, if you’re expecting something (or someone) urgent to pop into your inbox, send them a separate note with your personal email or phone number. Alternatively, you can also just make sure whoever your go-to contact is has that information in case you do need to be reached. Once you handle that, you can do what your out-of-office says you’re doing and actually spend the day recharging.
And while we all have grace for friends and family who seem to take forever to get back to our messages, customers generally expect this degree of promptness when they text a business.
I say “thanks for your message” because it feels to brusque without a greeting – but I can see it either way.
Automatic email replies. The IS&T Knowledge Base (KB) details how to set up automatic replies for your MIT email through the Exchange service or on Outlook. Both allow you to set the start and end date of the auto-response and to choose if everyone will receive this auto-reply or only those within MIT.
Using email copy creatively can go miles when using an autoresponder. The mundane, repetitive language is the number one reason behind people sighing and not the unavailability of the concerned person. Getting creative with the email copy can de-escalate the frustration and even put a smile on their face. Everyone needs a break, and words can convey it beautifully like this example.
I’m with you on this one. Management has access to a mansion and a townhouse in two different fabulous vacation destinations and it burns my butt every time I see an out of office from one of them (98% white men) going on about how they’ll be enjoying this perk. In the meantime, a few years back we had to eliminate free coffee at the offices because business was not good enough (it was eventually brought back after company president realized after a year that people were really pissed).
When Amy Spurling, cofounder of the company perks software company Compt, went on vacation, she ended her message with a clear direction about who to contact: “If you need immediate help, please contact [name and email address]. I will be responding to all emails on my return.”
The response on Twitter has also been overwhelmingly positive. "I love Daimler's approach to holiday email," says the entrepreneur Nuno Almeida, while the FT's Hanna Kuchler tweets: "Now this is email management."
The start of the holiday season does not mean letting your inbox enjoy the same degree of leisure and festivities as you do. Despite being busy with all the buzz and planning, you can hardly lock your business’ door before taking care of what happens with your inbox.
So, professionals are expected to use out-of-office email autoresponders whenever they will be out of reach for a fairly long time.
I’m currently out of the office, enjoying some peanuts and Cracker Jacks with my family. Can you guess where I am? That’s okay, you’re busy.