Correct usage of "automatic reply email"

In other words, one day I sent an email to the manager of a supplier and immediately received an automatic reply from her email: "I am on maternity leave. . . Will end on February 4, 20 14. Please contact XXX in the meantime. . . Strangely, she has finished maternity leave and worked for three months. Everyone went to work, but the notice of leave was hung in the mailbox for a long time, which was obviously caused by carelessness. I took this matter to Weibo, and immediately a classmate commented, "I never set up an automatic reply in my email, and I am particularly disgusted with it, but I don't know why so many people think that setting up an automatic reply is a professional and professional behavior. Then there are many voices in favor, and the voice of opposition is not weak. Seeing this, I found that some students may not fully understand "how to use automatic email reply", so I took it as the second topic in our business writing class.

"Email Auto-reply" is just a gadget in email. Since the designers of e-mail created it, it naturally has its place. Whether the tool itself is professional depends on how you use it. Properly used, it is professional; Improper use is just a chicken rib or even a joke in the eyes of others.

How can we use this gadget correctly, make it practical and intimate, and add points to your professional image? Below, I will analyze it from two aspects:

1. When should I use AutoReply Mail?

Second, how to use the "automatic mail reply"?

Now I can't remember when I started using "email auto-reply". It must have been a long time ago. Presumably, at some time in the past, after seeing the automatic reply bounced back in the mailbox of company leaders or other colleagues, I, like many people, found this function very eye-catching, so I used it like a gourd painting gourd ladle. And later, I paid more attention to the sentences in other people's automatic replies. As soon as I saw the excellent ones, I extracted them and optimized the wording in my reply to make it look more stylish. Our company has never explicitly stipulated that employees must set up an automatic reply in the mailbox, but basically every employee who frequently uses the company mailbox will make this move, which is the result of the mutual influence of a group member, and this result has become a part of corporate culture.

Some people think that "corporate culture" is something advocated by the company's core management, such as the values written in the employee handbook, posters on bulletin boards, and various ideas and slogans often mentioned at meetings. In fact, what needs to be constantly advocated, reminded and even enforced is not the existing elements in the corporate culture, but the fresh elements that the core management tries to implant into the "corporate culture". Why should we implant strongly? Because of lack. "Corporate culture" is a collective behavior pattern naturally formed by many people in an organization. There is no need for management to say that what employees will do is the real "corporate culture".

Although I have been using "email autoresponder" for many years, I was very surprised when I received some autoresponders. One of them is my nonsense reply at the beginning of this article that I will take maternity leave after working for three months. The other is the reply I received when I exchanged emails with some college students. In the early days of my blog, I held several small-scale training courses to guide college students in job hunting skills. In class, I often instruct my classmates to revise their resumes by email, and many students have automatic replies in their mailboxes. Later, when I sent an email to my son's teacher and undergraduate tutor, I also saw this automatic reply. The "automatic reply language" set by college students is very similar. Your email has been sent to my mailbox, and I will reply to you as soon as possible.

Why do college students' "email automatic reply" surprise me? Because, at work, I have never seen such an automatic reply. Yes, you are right. As a person in a company where "email automatic reply" is part of corporate culture, I have never seen such automatic reply. The automatic replies I received in the working environment were all left by the recipients when they were on business trips, vacations, going out for meetings and business training. In other words, as soon as I saw this reply, I knew that the other party was not in a normal working state and could not receive and read my email at the usual speed. The content of these replies is also relatively fixed, usually saying, "Why can't I receive and read your email as usual?"? If there is something urgent, please call my mobile phone XXXXX or contact someone. " Compared with the automatic reply used by business people, the automatic reply used by college students has a remarkable feature: there is no clear time range, and it is a routine reply setting.

I guess that the "hate mail automatic reply" mentioned at the beginning of this article is caused by this kind of automatic reply that can be received at any time, regardless of time. I also think it is excusable for college students to reply automatically. After all, they don't use email as frequently as business people, so I hope the other party can feel at ease after seeing this automatic reply. However, the question is, can the other party really settle down when they see this "routine automatic reply"? I believe that many readers, like me, understand their slightly immature automatic reply when they know that the recipient is a college student. After all, their environment is different from that of office workers. But what if business people set up this "regular automatic reply" in their mailboxes? Light is ridiculous and generous, but heavy is disgusting!

As we all know, just because an email arrives at the other party's mailbox doesn't mean that the other party has read it. What the sender really cares about is not whether the email has arrived, but whether the other party has taken corresponding actions after reading this email. Therefore, for business people, "regular automatic reply" is not only a boring measure to coax children, but also causes unnecessary mail interference to the sender. If employees of a company collectively use "timed automatic reply", their mail server will soon crash.

Seeing this, some people may ask: What if there is something wrong with our mailbox, either I can't send it out or the other party really can't receive it? Today, even a free mailbox generally has the function of sending status notifications, and it must have a corporate mailbox. Although some companies will lose the chain when using the managed server, it is unlikely to happen after all. Besides, if you are in urgent need of the other party's timely reply, you should not sit in front of the computer and wait, you should pick up the phone and call him. For this, I have been in the first class, "Why is mail not taken seriously? I have already said it in "",so I won't go into details here.

The function of the "email auto-reply" gadget is not to let the sender see the reassuring notice, but to make a "disclaimer" for the recipient to protect himself. It is actually saying to the sender: I am not in the service area now. Oh, if you have something urgent, you can call my mobile phone or someone else. Of course, if you don't even want to answer the phone when you are traveling or on vacation abroad during that time, you can also write the sentence "I can't answer the phone at this time" on the automatic reply. But whether this writing is good or not depends on your professional characteristics and the corporate culture of your company.

At the beginning of this article, it is said that maternity leave is taken after working for three months, mainly because the setter forgot to cancel this automatic reply. For Outlook corporate mail users, this so-called "forgetting" is very strange. Because in the automatic reply setting of Outlook mailbox, there is a place for people to fill in the usage time period. See what the students in the business writing class say.

If your company doesn't use Outlook mailbox, you can take a look at this classmate's suggestion.

In addition to the conventional setting method, two other students shared their good habit of using automatic reply.

The second point above deserves special attention. For us in China, it doesn't matter whether there is an automatic reply during the Golden Week, Lunar New Year and other holidays. But if you have people from other countries in your correspondence, this is very necessary.

I quite agree with Charles that there should be internal and external differences in setting up "email automatic reply". That's what I usually do. For people inside the enterprise, I will take the initiative to write my mobile phone number and the contact information of the job agent in the reply language. It is best to be cautious about emails from outside the enterprise. I just wrote "Dear sender, I'm not in the office today. If you have something urgent, please call me. " This casual writing is related to my professional characteristics: first, I am not a business person, and I don't need to announce my mobile phone number to people in all directions; Second, people who have business dealings with me naturally know my mobile phone number, and those who don't know it mean that they have not established business relations with me. For a Party A, it is not pleasant for too many people to know the mobile phone number.

In addition, I appreciate the second point that Charles said, "The leader writes the information of the authorizer in the automatic reply of the email". Obviously, the leaders of his company attach great importance to work efficiency. Because the company's top management is "not in the service area" and I can't find anyone to sign it, I have already felt all kinds of urgency. How can I not applaud this attitude and practice of leaders automatically replying to emails?

Well, that's enough for the second lecture on the essentials of business writing in Weibo open class. Next, let's talk about how to write a stylish email title. 』 。 If you are interested in this course, please go to @ CareerCoach MsYe's Weibo homepage after 9: 00 on Wednesday evening.