The holidays are quickly approaching, which means you most likely have a planned vacation coming up during the next 1-2 weeks. Although taking time off is a great escape and helps you mentally recharge, it can also cause unnecessary chaos if you don't take a little time to prepare for your time off. If you don't want to work during your time off (seriously, not even check your email), what better way to prepare than with an Out of Office email auto-responder!? Check out our tips, below, for OoO auto-responders that will set you up for serious vacation success:
If you want to avoid annoying follow up emails, let senders know when they can expect to hear back from you by including your expected date of return. Won't be checking emails over your break? Let people know that your inbox won't be monitored during this time period.
If you seriously won't be checking your inbox during your time away, build in an extra day or two of buffer time on your OoO response to allow you to get back into the swing of your schedule before people expect you to dive back into your inbox. Everyone's going to be eagerly awaiting a response from you the very day of you return, so this buffer is great for stealthily convincing people that you're super on top of your inbox by being able to get back to them the day (or day before) you're set to be "back in office."
If you regularly receive emails that don't necessarily need your expertise to respond, try letting senders know where else they can look to have their questions answered. For example, you can list out contact information for each department as follows:
"For billing inquiries, contact billing@yourlawfirm.com. For all other questions, please email info@yourlawfirm.com or call 555-555-5555."
Depending on your role within the firm and your firm's culture, it's not unreasonable to add a bit of flair to your OoO responder. Feel free to include a short and sweet note about what you'll be up to if it makes sense to do so.
It can be easy to overflow your OoO message with all the information you think senders will need in your absence, but normal email etiquette should still apply for an auto-response. Overly-wordy messages will leave your recipients' eyes glazed over and may cause extra emails with even more follow up questions. Remember: when in doubt, keep it simple.
And that's it! Did everything sound pretty obvious to you? If so, it should, but you'd be surprised at how many people we see totally flunk the OoO email auto-responder, and we don't want you to be one of them!
P.S. Check out these completely hilarious OoO vacation messages!