Every holiday, we customize our voicemail for relevance to the theme and season. This Thanksgiving, the message is this: “Thank you for calling. We are currently closed in observance of Thanksgiving. We’re unable to attend your call today, but we promise to get back to you if you would kindly leave your name and contact details on record.
Q. Will administrative offices be open, in case there is some type of emergency during winter break?
.
Thanks for calling [Company Name].For more information about our products, press 1. If you have troubleshooting questions, press 2. For billing questions, press 3. For a Dial by Name directory, press 4. For our regular business hours, press 5. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now. For all other inquiries, please stay on the line, and a representative will be happy to assist you. 5. Offering the Operator First
When I tweeted this, some people argued that the pollster above was using his wife as an excuse. This might be true (and, if so, is probably a bad defense mechanism from some of the work culture habits described earlier). Another possible explanation is that the pollster is telling the truth — his inability to try and balance a vacation with some light work time built in is understandably frustrating and exhausting to those around him.
3.) Bem-vindo ao John Doe AG. Nossos escritórios em Berlim estão fechados no momento devido à um feriado. Você pode nos contatar, nos dias úteis, de segunda a sexta-feira das 9h ao meio-dia e das 13:00-18:00 horas. Para informações gerais, você também pode nos enviar um e-mail em [email protected]. Muito obrigado. Te desejamos um bom dia - sua John Doe AG.
If you’re using Gmail, you’ll find settings for out of office messages by clicking the cog icon on the main screen:
Note: The following steps are for users with a Microsoft Exchange account. If you don’t see the words, “Connected to: Microsoft Exchange” at the bottom of your Outlook window, check out our article on how to set up out of office in Outlook with an IMAP/POP3 account.
My voicemail is set up to forward to my email. I did this years ago, way before the Late Unpleasantness. And it’s perfect for working remotely. (I have trained my students to use email. My colleagues hate voicemail too, so we use email and gchat. Or walk down the hall when we’re live and in person)
When one of my colleagues is out of the office, he doesn’t mess around. In fact, he’s turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary from fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.
7. Out of Office for a Family Vacation. This is a great template to use if you’re on a family vacation. Hey (specify the Name field id), Thanks for your email.
PS: We love our downtime and here at HAR, we're big believers everyone needs a vacay from work. Yes, even you—the social media junkies, the workaholics, the entrepreneurial diehards who accidentally (or "accidentally") take their smartphone into the shower.
Personally, I’d think it’s funny to receive an OOO like was in the video, at least the first time. It wouldn’t fly AT ALL at my company, but it’s at least interesting. All I really want to see is how long you’re out, and who I need to contact instead.
Setting your out of office may be different depending on the email provider you use. But whether you’re on Outlook, Gmail, or another platform, it should be a relatively straightforward process.
If your request is urgent, there’s no use sitting idly in my inbox. So please send your request to [Contact Name] at [contact email]. Whether you prefer to stick with something simple or have a little fun with your holiday out-of-office message, it’s important that you always make sure to at least include the basics: your return date and an alternative contact people can reach out to for urgent matters.
When you’re trying to contact someone on a matter of importance (or even urgency) on one side of the equation and you find out via an autoresponder that they are away for vacation, it can be incredibly frustrating unless they’ve done the front-end work beforehand. (I’m speaking from personal – and recent – experience here. And worse, there was no auto-responder set up. I had to use the – gasp! – telephone to find out what was going on.)
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With all that in mind, take a look at the following tips and tricks and six examples to make your automatic responses more effective: