I do this when I’m on personal vacations. When I’m doing field work for research, I do tend to add a statement that I won’t have access to email/phone because I’m doing field work in X location.
A few years ago we had a team meeting, with the typical agenda provided to all by our manager. One of the items was OOO and the manager’s name and dates of her upcoming vacation–of course, to give the team advance notice that she would be out. One of my colleagues did not know the acronym and was at first confused. His read: “Ooooh, Mary is on vacation for these dates and is so excited.” Which I am sure was the case, but . . . no, not exactly. Ha ha.
.
I can’t remember if this was just an outgoing voice message before routing you to an individual, or for a voicemail, but I remember a fun December phone message from a small company (I think an insurance agency) sung to the tune of a Christmas carol–something like Jingle Bells. The content was something like: you’ve reached our office during this holiday season, hope your holidays are happy, please 1) leave a message or 2) press X for who you want. Other than the tune, it wasn’t overly holiday-centric (for those who don’t celebrate the holidays) and it was cute.
My European colleagues get an extended summer holiday all at the same time, which means we get OOO notes like this:
All of HubSpot’s marketing, sales CRM, customer service, CMS, and operations software on one platform. Free HubSpot CRM Overview of all products Marketing Hub Sales Hub Service Hub CMS Hub Operations Hub NEW App Marketplace Pricing Resources Resources Education Free Courses & Certifications Why HubSpot ? Services Onboarding & Consulting Services Partners & Developers About Start free or get a demo Start free or get a demo Log in Customer Support Marketing Sales Service Website Subscribe Subscribe via Email Email Address
Dear Customer, Please note that all company offices will be closed from [date]. We will reopen on [date] We wish you the best holiday. Regards, [Company name]
As long as you’ve covered the basics—dates of your absence and who to contact in your absence—you should be good to go.
Something like, “I will not have access to email while I am out and will get back to you when I return. If your issue is urgent, please resend your email after X date,” would be… more polite, I guess.
It was a commodities trading firm. I still barely know what they do. But, I would answer the phone, listen to whatever they said, understand not much and then I would say “lemme put you on hold” and then I would turn to the nearest person not on the phone and I’d say something dumb like “They’re calling about like…salt maybe?” And then I’d transfer to that person and they would figure out who it went to. (They all knew who was trading what that day. Nobody ever told me.)
I work for a Japanese company which has a regular rotation of engineers who come over for 2-4 years so we get some enjoyable translations for all manner of communication.
One of my favorite OOO messages I ever received was from a customer who was a barrister or soliciter (not sure the right term for an English lawyer). It said he would be unavailable because he is “on trial.”
Rather than sounding like a boring email robot, you could add a funny tone to your letter. Use a GIF or a meme to joke about what you’re doing on vacation, but remember not to go overboard.
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.
If you require assistance before then I can be reached on my cell phone at ( cell number).
Hello! Please note: [date] through [date] are holiday days for our employees. Our office will be closed and because of this there will likely be a delay in responding to your email until [date] when most of our team returns.
There is no vacation responder on iOS to auto-reply text on the iPhone. However, there is a workaround for the iPhone auto-reply while you are on vacation. We are going to use the DND mode feature to auto-reply to incoming text messages while you are on vacation. This will work perfectly while you want to set auto-reply text on your iPhone to reply to calls and messages automatically while you are on vacation. iPhone Settings Scroll down for Do Not Disturb Tap on Auto-Reply Fill out the vacation text message you want. Select the recipient list to All Contacts.
To map out your customer's journey, all you have to do is follow our template. Download the Customer Journey Map Template to get started.