Office Hours

What office hours do

Office hours tell customers when your team is around and how fast it usually replies.

• In the widget: once a conversation reaches your team (a ticket is created, or the agent sends it straight to the team), the widget posts “We typically reply in a few minutes.” during office hours and “We’re away, back Monday at 9:00 AM.” outside them. Times are shown in the visitor’s own timezone.
• Agents set to Team only: the widget header shows the same status, and outside office hours a visitor who isn’t signed in is asked for an email before writing, so your team can reply after they leave. The email is saved on the visitor’s contact; it does not create a sales lead or a lead alert.
• Inbox header: an Open / Away badge next to the Inbox title. Hover it to see what customers see right now.
• Routing rules: the Within office hours condition (is true / is false) checks whether the conversation was created during office hours. Use it to route after-hours conversations to an on-call inbox or raise their priority.
• Email (optional): an acknowledgment for new emails that arrive outside office hours.

While office hours are off, nothing changes in the widget and every conversation counts as within office hours.

Setting up office hours

Go to Settings > Inboxes > Office hours (needs the Edit settings permission).

1. Switch Office hours on.
2. Weekly hours: pick the timezone, switch each day on or off, and set its opening and closing times. A day can have several periods (for a lunch break, add a second period). An end time of 00:00 means midnight. Daylight saving time is handled for you: 9:00 stays 9:00 local time all year.
3. Holidays (starts closed; click it to open): add the days you are closed. A holiday closes the whole day in the timezone above.
4. Expected reply time (starts closed; click it to open): what the widget promises during office hours (“in a few minutes” up to “in a few days”) and, optionally, outside them, after “We’re away, back …”.
5. Click Save office hours. The widget picks the change up within a minute or two.

Out-of-hours email reply

Switch on Out-of-hours email reply to acknowledge a new email that arrives outside office hours. Write the message in plain text; {back} becomes the next opening, for example “Monday, November 9 at 9:00 AM EST”. It is off by default.

• It replaces the general auto-reply (Settings > Emails) outside office hours, so a customer never gets two acknowledgments. In office hours the general auto-reply works as before.
• It is only sent for the email that opens a new conversation, never when an AI agent answers email, and never to an address that bounced, complained or was blocked.