8 Steps to Setting Up the Out-of-Office Message in Salesforce Chatter

Setting up an out-of-office message in Salesforce Chatter ensures effective communication even when you’re away.

Whether you’re on vacation or attending important meetings, configuring this feature can keep your colleagues informed. Let’s walk through the simple steps to effectively set up your out-of-office message in Salesforce Chatter.

In addition to learning how to set up your out-of-office message, you’ll discover a compelling case study where a customer customized this feature to enhance customer satisfaction by 15%.

Let’s get started!

Setting Up the Out-of-Office Message: Why it Matters?

1. Informing Senders of Your Absence:

Example: If you’re going on a week-long vacation, your out-of-office message can inform colleagues that you are not available during that period.
Use Case: Jane, a project manager, sets an Out of Office message before leaving for a conference. Her teammates receive an immediate notification of her unavailability.

2. Communicating Duration of Absence:

Example: Your Out of Office message states, “I will be out of the office from June 1st to June 7th.”
Use Case: Mark, a sales representative, goes on a business trip for five days. His Out of Office message specifies the dates, allowing his team to manage client expectations and handle urgent queries in his absence.

3. Setting Expectations for Response Time:

Example: “I will respond to your email upon my return on June 8th.”
Use Case: Sarah, an HR manager, is on maternity leave. Her Out-of-Office message informs employees/teammates of her return date, so they know when to expect a response, reducing follow-up emails and calls.

Utilizing the Out of Office feature in Salesforce Chatter ensures clear communication and sets appropriate expectations for your absence, leading to better workflow management and less confusion.

8 Steps to Setting Up Out of Office Message in Salesforce Chatter:

Step 1: From Setup, find Chatter Settings in the Quick Find Box.

Step 2: Click on Chatter Settings.

Step 3: Scroll down to the “Out of Office” section and select the checkbox next to “Users can set Out of Office messages.”

Step 4: Click Save.

Step 5: Click on your name from your profile options.

Step 6: Click on the Out of Office option.

Step 7: Check the checkbox next to “Set Out-of-Office message.” Select the Start Date for the time you will be out of the office and the End Date for when the message will expire. You can customize the message or leave it as is. Finally, click Save.

Step 8: Now your Out of Office message is saved and will appear next to your name in Chatter.

After setup, your Out of Office message will be visible wherever your name appears in Chatter.

With these steps, you can easily implement an out-of-office message in Salesforce Chatter.

Increase Customer Satisfaction With Custom Out-of-Office Implementation

Out-of-Office messages in Salesforce are traditionally designed for internal communication. Yet, imagine the possibilities if you could extend this capability to include external customer communication. While Salesforce’s standard features don’t support this out-of-the-box, we customized it to enable external communication for one of our customers.

Grazitti played a pivotal role in helping a leading Spatial Data Company not only implement Out-of-office functionality for external communication but also achieve a 15% rise in customer satisfaction. Here’s a concise summary of our approach:

The customer was facing the following problems:

• Inefficient case handling during the agent’s absence led to delayed responses and unresolved customer queries or complaints.
• Customer dissatisfaction due to lack of timely support and solutions when agents would be Out-Of-Office (OOO).
• Manual case assignment process causing bottlenecks and impacting business productivity.

Our team, at Grazitti, offered the following solutions:

• Developed a custom Out of Office (OOO) functionality on top of a standard OOO feature to streamline case management when agents would be unavailable.
• Customized the home page to display the agent’s name that is currently out of office, assignment types (manual and automatic)*, and user details.

Note:
Auto-Assignment: Auto-assignment is when the case is assigned automatically to the next available agent. In auto-assignment, the cases get assigned to the previous queues from the batch class that runs every hour and then those cases get assigned to available agents from Omni-channel.

Manual Assignment: In manual assignment, one can see all the cases that are pending, waiting, in testing, waiting for the customer’s response, reviewing, etc., and can be picked up manually or assigned to a queue or an available agent/user according to the priority and urgency to resolve.

• Introduced an automated system to reassign cases from OOO agents to available agents or queues.
• Implemented a user-friendly interface for agents and managers to mark OOO status and manage case assignments effectively.

Results achieved by the customer:

• 15% Increase in Customer Satisfaction
• 25% Reduction in Manual Intervention
• Faster Case Resolution & Streamlined Operations

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