I’ll be out of the office from 07.07. until 16.07.2020 with no access to my mailbox. Please contact (COLLEAGUE NAME), [email protected].
An old boss had a pet peeve about this so I became very conscious of making sure that I listed out who to contact on what day… before the group email. So it looked something like this:
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Dear Customer, Our office will be closed from [date] until [date] and close again for December 31 and January 1 to welcome the New Year. We wish you the warmest holiday. Regards. [Company name] ——. Dear Customer, Please note that on [day], [date], is [holiday name]. The store will be closed all day and will open again at [time] on [Day].
Not a translator, but I do work in a field where bilingual offices are pretty common, and I have not done my OOO in our second language–mostly because it is a non-Latin alphabet, and I do not have the secondary keyboard installed. I’m pretty sure my voicemail is in both languages, though.
Live support will be unavailable during our closure. Emergency support requests should be submitted via our contact form or via Basecamp if your project is currently active. We wish all of our clients a very happy and safe 4th of July holiday. We look forward to working with you when we get back from a well deserved long weekend. See you next week!
Out of Office replies can be turned on very easily and even timed to expire at a designated time. But did you know you can customize your OOF so that some people do not get the auto reply, or that they get a customized reply different than the rest of the group? The steps below will show you how.
Over Twitter DMs, one woman sent me her OOO messages from when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The messages — composed while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments and recovering from surgery — were detailed and unique. They offered touches of humor, honesty, details about her treatment schedules and set expectations for others trying to reach her. She offered alternative contact options for potential emailers to make sure urgent requests didn’t fall through the cracks but offered a dose or reality as well. I particularly appreciated this line:
You are hereby informed that a large number of our company workers are going to take their days off due to extreme weather conditions prevailing in the city. Due to this, there would be much difficulty in coming and going so it is a mutual decision from the heads of our office to make it closed from 25-12-20XX to 02-01-20XX. This temporary closure will result in delayed answers to your queries, so these will be answered right after the opening of our office. All the delays are regretted.
Thank you for you message. Our offices are closed until [insert date] and I am out of the office. Our entire staff is reflecting on a wonderful year, resetting, and recharging for 2018. We will respond promptly after the holidays, but in the meantime we will be busy doing the following:
It’s so much easier for everyone to have an OoO that says “I’m gone- please contact PaperClipSortingTeam ‘at’ spacelyspacesprockets for help while I’m out.
Just because your business is text-enabled it doesn’t mean you have to be a two-way communication platform. You can create an auto-reply message to all incoming messages letting them know the inbox they’ve reached isn’t monitored and direct them elsewhere for contact! Thanks for your response! Please note this inbox is not monitored. To reach someone with a question or feedback, please email [email protected]
Informal approach helps your clients think of you as of a human being. This alleviates some of the annoyance they may feel because of not receiving a proper reply. Generally, making people laugh is a great way to make people remember you. Do that and your clients won’t switch to a competitor.
My snarky colleague sure did in his out-of-office message below. We send thank-you letters in response to holiday gifts, so it's only natural to expect the same gesture in our work inboxes …
That sounds like she’s using an auto-responder, not an Out of Office. The primary difference, as far as I can tell, is that an auto-response will respond to every email, whereas the OOO message will only reply once per sender when it’s turned on. (Turning it off and then back on resets it)
Website: https://purelovemessages.com/office-closed-for-holiday-message-template/
I think people still understand that out of office can refer to home office as well. But you could say “unavailable” or “away from work”.
If their message is urgent or they’d like to contact someone else instead, you can let them know what to do.