You just have to be very certain of your audience if you’re going to use an email with humor. It has to be the right tone, and it has to be right for your business and your clientele.
Hello and thank you for calling, [Company Name], where [state your short company slogan]. If you know the extension of the party you are trying to reach, you may dial it at any time. To speak with a Sales representative, press 1. To reach a Customer Support agent, press 2. To reach our Billing department, press 3. If you would like to know our regular business hours and location, press 4. If you would like to speak with an Operator, press 0, or press 9 to repeat the available options. 2. Basic Customer Inquiry
.
There ought to be a word - and perhaps there is, in German - for the mix of feelings that accompanies composing and activating a holiday out-of-office message. There's smugness, of course, and a gratifying sense of laying down one's virtual tools after a horribly long shift. But for many of us, these nice feelings are tempered by the knowledge that in two weeks, refreshed but depressed, we will have to trawl through hundreds of emails, many of which will be conference room notifications for meetings about crises that have passed.
Out of Office Out of Office Friday, Nov 8th – Friday, Nov 9thI’m Out Til Monday the 12th
Of course, every message sends a message, even a barebones OOO that seems to say nothing more than that you’re away until next week, so why not try to inject a little personality? You could get quirky by giving your auto-responder robot a personality. You could dispense with words altogether and substitute a gif or emojis. Or how about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada? It might be worth noting here that the amount of personality you inject depends on your trade. What earns you cachet in the creative industries might backfire in the financial sector, for instance.
Now that you know what you should and shouldn’t include, how do you go about crafting the perfect out-of-office vacation message?
I hope you enjoyed our list of best office closed for holiday message templates that will get you through the season.
There's no better feeling than Christmas approaching, but how do you achieve the perfect holiday... Get Your Office Into the Festive Spirit
6. "Hi, this is [your name]. I'm either on a call or away from my desk. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message and I'll get back to you. Thank you."
Same, and I leave this template in my settings so all I have to do is change the date. Simple, to the point, and no one can say they didn’t know what to do while I was out.
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.
“You have reached [Sandy and Bill’s] voice mail. Please leave your message after the beep so we can call you back if we want to.”
How you end a letter is important. It’s your last chance to make a good first impression on your reader. Choose the wrong closing, and you might damage the goodwill you have built up in the rest of your communication.
If you are seeing this message, it is because I’m retired and having the time of my life. I may be out gardening, or fishing, or on a well-earned Caribbean cruise with my wife. Something you can look forward to when you’ve reached my status and vintage.
An award-winning team of journalists, designers, and videographers who tell brand stories through Fast Company's distinctive lens
If you need any help, I'm sure that contacting anyone else in the company will also be a waste of time.
I’ve heard “please respond at *your* earliest convenience,” but never the other way around.