Are you going on vacation? Are you going to be out of the office for a short or even long period of time? Don’t forget to set up and turn on your “Out of Office Assistant” on Microsoft Outlook.

It’s amazing of how many people actually forget to do this. You e-mail someone asking them a question or wanting to state an urgent matter. You wait and wait, but no response. A few hours or days later (depending on the urgency), you e-mail them back again and still no response.

It’s really important to let your fellow staff members and especially your clients know that you will be away for either a short or an extended period of time. A simple bounce back message will be e-mailed to them letting them know that you can’t help them at the present time and for them to contact someone that you’ve delegated to help out in these types of situations.

Here’s a sample message that you can use to create your “Out of Office Assistant”:

I will be out of the office from ____ until ____. I'll be checking email _______(once a week, every day, etc)________, but will have limited ability to respond. If you need immediate assistance or information about the (question/issue), please contact (delegate’s name, e-mail address, phone number).

If you work in a large corporation like me and have quite a few staff members on your team handling different areas, you should include a list of names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers corresponding to the different products/services they handle.

For example:

• Advertising inquiries, please contact John Doe at john.doe@company.com
• Billing inquiries, please contact Jane Smith at jane.smith@company.com

And so on and so forth.

And lastly, don’t forget to turn it on. Also, don’t forget to change your voice mail message to read the same information.

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Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter!


Post from: Administrative Assistant