Office hours and response times

Overview

Provide clarity on expected response times when agents are active or away to visitors.

These response estimates will display on the Talk widget homepage and in auto-replies during conversations, depending on agents online or away status.

Accessing office hours & response times

To access the office hours & response times page, go to Settings > Inbox > Office hours & response times

Managing office hours & response times

The office hours & response times page allows users to:

• Set default office hours
• Set agent status after inactivity
• Set default online response time
• Set default away response times
• Set office hours per team

Default office hours

If you set up office hours, you’ll be shown as Online within these hours, regardless of individual agent status.

Adding office hours

1. Navigate to office hours & response times.
2. Select Add hours.
3. From here, you can choose weekdays, weekends, or specific individual days and hours according to your preference.
4. If needed, remove office hours by clicking the trash icon.
5. At Timezone, set the timezone for which you want the office hours to apply. 
6. Select Save to finalize.

Outside of default office hours

Outside of the default office hours, your Talk widget will indicate when your team is scheduled to be back Online.

Agent status after inactivity

You have control over how an agent's status appears during office hours regarding their activity level.

Choose the appropriate setting to:

• Automatically set agents as Away after a set period of inactivity.
• Don’t automatically set agents as Away during office hours.

• With either option, agents can of course set their own status manually at any time.
• See an example below of what an agent will see when they have been marked as inactive. This message is not customer facing.

Behavior of online status based on office hour settings.

The agent status behavior during periods of inactivity differs based on whether default office hours are set.

With default office hours set:

• Agents will always appear as Online by default.
• However, if an agent remains inactive within the specified time frame set:
  • The green dot on their avatar in the widget will disappear.
  • In any open customer threads assigned to the agent, they will appear as Away.
  • The talk widget will display the company as Online even if no agents are currently active.

  

  Without default office hours set:
• If an agent remains inactive for 30 minutes they will automatically be set to Away.
  • The chat widget will indicate that no agents are currently online.
• If the setting Don't automatically set them as away is enabled:
  • The agent will continue to display as Online even if they are inactive.
  • This may lead to a suboptimal customer experience as customers may expect a timely response from an agent who appears to be online but is actually inactive.

Default online response time

When you’re shown as Online, there will be an accompanying message that tells customers when they can expect a response. 

Select one of the following options:

• A few minutes
• A few hours
• A day
• Don’t commit to a time

• The default online response time setting will also send a message indicating the expected response time whenever a customer starts a chat. For example:

Default away response time

If you have added office hours at Default office hours, then the options to select a default away response time will be unavailable. This is because we use the office hours to tell customers when you will be online next. For example, a person who wants to start a conversation outside your office hours will see this type of message:

If you have no office hours set, you will be able to select one of the following options:

• A few hours
• A day
• 2 business days
• Don’t commit to a time.

Set office hours per team

If you have teams configured, you can choose between following the default office hours or setting specific office hours for each team. This flexibility is especially useful when managing teams across different locations or time zones. If no teams are set up, the default office hours will be applied universally.

Set custom office hours per team:

1. Navigate to Settings > Inbox > Teams and members.
2. Select the Team for which you want to configure custom hours.
3. Specify the desired hours and timezone for the team.