Are you really Out-Of-Office?

15 years ago, our workforce wasn’t blessed with the mobile technology we enjoy nowadays. We only had access to our desktop computers, so if you were away for a few days, you were completely out of touch.  Back then, people used to call on your desk phone, and if you didn’t pick up, they’d leave a message. When you got back to your desk, you’d listen to your messages, and respond. But that was then. Today, things are different. One of the differences is that we don’t just call people. We feel we may disturb them, or interfere with their day. So we communicate in writing. Email, Tweets, iMessage, Skype – we’d leave a short message in writing. We know you’re busy, and don’t want to be too intrusive. We give you the freedom to respond at your own pace, but really we expect to see the three dots wiggling around as soon as we finish typing…

However, it’s not always possible to respond in real time. Sometimes we’re genuinely busy, talking to other people, or otherwise occupied. It’s only for a brief period of time, and we’ll get back to communitexting shortly. We all understand that. We don’t like it, but understand it…

Since we don’t like the fact that you’re briefly out-of-touch, receiving an automated message from you, is just plain infuriating… #justsayin’… It’s like you rubbing-it-in…

All year long, I’m (as I’m sure most of you are) in and out of an office, every day and have been for the past 20 years. I have never, and I mean NEVER, had an OOO (Out-Of-Office) automatic reply, never intending to use one! To put it bluntly (in case the previous statement was a bit sugar-coated…) I absolutely hate automatic replies.

To me they are not only useless and ineffective, but also, under the pretense of I-can’t-respond-to-you-straight-away, so-I’ll-come-up-with-an-acceptable-excuse-for-it, actually achieving the opposite effect. If I’m a client / colleague / prospect / Manager needing assistance from you, I don’t really care what you’re currently doing (on an international flight / in a conference / away from my desk for a meeting / on a beach downing martini’s or anything else… All I care about is myself and my problem, and I need YOU to fix it. Since I know you own a smartphone (or even a Blackberry) I also know that you’ve actually received my email on your mobile device, about a second after I sent it. I also know you read it! So why pretend otherwise??

Today – there’s really no reason to be non-responsive. There’s certainly no reason to announce it. I understand when companies send automatic reminders, scheduled messaging and news updates. As humans, I believe there’s no need to automate our responses. Not your emails, tweets, or any other written communication…

Out-Of-Office automatic replies aren’t productive, or even efficient, as most people see the “out of office” in the subject line of the returned (bounced) email, and will delete it anyway, so there’s not really a point in customizing the message. The same goes to auto DMs (Direct Twitter messages). Many messages I’ve received are out of date or irrelevant anyway, when people using them forget to turn them off. Here’s example for an email I’ve received recently:

Hello

Please be advised that our offices will close at 14:30 today for our annual Staff Summer Party.

Our payments team have been processing payments since early this morning to ensure payments are processed.  However, any funds received after 14:30 will not be processed until first thing on Monday morning. 

Thank you for your understanding. 

Kind regards

Don’t get me wrong – I love Staff Summer Parties. To be honest, I wish I were invited! On a serious note though, this email was a response an email I sent on the Monday morning. I really couldn’t care less about the staff party on the Friday afternoon. That is so-last-week! Especially since I wasn’t invited…

Thank you for your email.

I am on annual holidays from the 26th of June till the 8th of July.

In my absence please contact Sergey  at +xxxxx165990

I will have an internet access but please expect a late reply

Kind regards,

This (kind-of) makes sense, doesn’t it? “I’ll be away on holidays, I will read your responses, but will reply late as I’m having fun”. Nothing wrong with that, right? The only problem with this email, that it was received on the 18^th of August. That is 6 weeks past the date of return. This makes the Staff Party email seems a lot better, doesn’t it? These are just recent examples of the last few days. I have too many more of those, unfortunately….

When I send you an email, I expect a reply from you, and expect dealing with you. I don’t want to talk to someone from your team about it, as I’m sure they are not across the issue anyway, and it would take longer to explaining the issue than just waiting for you to get back from your conference, overseas flight, or a cruise in the Caribbean island. I’m prepared to wait what seems to me as a “reasonable amount of time”, until you’re available to get back to me with an acknowledgement, a solution, or an update.

It’s time to step up, be present and in the present, and be responsive. It’s a fast paced world, and if you can’t keep up, you’ll get left behind.