Before each holiday or irregular business day that your office will be closed, follow this checklist to ensure your excellent customer service continues and your business remains safe throughout the closure.
Set your out of office messages and determine who monitors division and department messages.
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Best wishes for happy holidays and a magnificent New Year. May the holiday season bring only happiness and joy to you and your loved ones. Wishing you and your loved ones peace, health, happiness, and prosperity in the coming New Year. Let the spirit of love gently fill our hearts and homes.
But your out-of-office message is as much for you as it is for the people receiving it, especially during the pandemic. “Boundaries have taken a big hit right now,” Ritter says. There’s a lot of pressure associated with missing something at work, and that stress has been heightened without the typical separation between office and home and with the added fear caused by an uncertain economy. An OOO message is a chance to set expectations, “to give yourself some breathing room and to ensure other people aren’t thinking negatively about you,” Ritter says, and it’s crucial for your mental health.
My biggest pet peeve is the opposite – people who NEVER turn on their OOO! I’m not saying for a day but when they’re out for an extended period of time and I’m reaching out to get a deliverable.
That makes sense. I normally say “Hi, I am out of the office on DATES. If you need to reach someone…….” or whatever.
I’ll be unreachable for a few days starting on December 11th because I’ll be at Growth Marketing Conference. I’ll have limited ability to return phone calls and emails until I return on December 13th, but if you want to talk accounting software options or learn all about the latest growth marketing tactics and tips when I return, please shoot me an email. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If you need immediate assistance, please contact my assistant Megan White at 971-841-0098, or at [email protected].
I run a summer camp and i can’t convince IT to forward the phone off season (and I forget to check those voicemails when they aren’t flashing in front of me), so the voicemail there says “You’ve reached camp, we are closed for the season, and voicemails on this machine are not checked. you can contact me at our head office at X or email me at [email protected], repeat info, thanks!
The best holiday messages are short, cheerful and specific. Try to include the person’s name, as well as a memory from the holiday season or year.
If you are a contingent worker or un- or under-employed, just email and I’ll give you a free subscription, no questions asked. If you’d like to underwrite one of those subscriptions, you can donate one here.
I appreciate your message. I am out of the office currently with no office email access. However, return on the following [date-of-return].
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.
Vacation Tracker helped me book some days off, so you will not be able to reach me until *date*! I will be busy surfing the waves in Portugal/ climbing Kilimanjaro/ taking pictures on the Great Wall of China/ exploring wildlife in Tanzania.
If you are going out of office but still leave something interesting for your contacts like poetry, that’s something really out of the box. This is a truly amazing OOO message, and reverting with poetry will surely make the receiver read it twice as emails are the last place one imagines reading poetries. Especially closing with “If all else fails, clear your cache…” is one good way of telling people that they will need proper help and it will anyway take time before they’re all set. Have a look at it here:
Amen. I have a co-worker who’s out of office message is always “spending time with my kiddos.” I don’t care. Just tell me who to contact and/or when you’ll be back.
I have traded a white Christmas, bulky sweaters, and hot chocolate for sandy beaches, sun tan lotion, and margaritas… and yes you guessed it I’m out of the office.
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