It is easy to set up your working hours in Freshchat and let your users know your team’s availability and when they can expect a response from your team. When a user initiates a conversation in Freshchat outside your working hours, you can send an automatic Away Message letting them know that your team is offline.


You might have different teams working across regions and international time zones as a company. In Freshchat you can set up different working hours for your various teams by creating multiple Business Hours and tagging them into Groups.


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Enable Business Hours

To turn on your default or universal Business Hours:

  • As an admin, go to Admin Settings> Configuration and Workflows > Conversation Business Hours.
  • Toggle the "Default Business Hour" switch to 'On'.
  • The default Business Hours will be applied for your Freshchat account.

Edit your default business hours

To edit your default Business Hours:

  1. Click on the three dots next to the enable button to open the business hours settings.
  2. Change the time zone to the one your business operates in.
  3. Choose the days of the week and the hours during the day that your team will be available to engage with your customers. You can also add multiple working slots for a day and the gaps between the two slots will be considered as your team being outside your business hours.
  4. Enter the Away Message which will be sent to customers if they reach out to you outside your business hours.
  5. Click on Save to save your changes.

Add Holidays to your business hours

Holidays are the days during the year during which your team wont be available to engage with your customers. If your customers reach out to you on a holiday, they will be shown the away message configured in your Business Hours settings


To add Holidays to your business hours:

  1. Click on the three dots next to the enable button.
  2. Select the Holidays tab.
  3. Click on the Add holidays button.
  4. Select the date and year of the holiday you want to add.
  5. Enter the name of the holiday.
  6. If you want to add another holiday, check the Add another option.
  7. Click Save.

Note: Setting up holidays is not available in Freshchat.


Set up multiple business hours

You can create multiple business hours from the Pro plan onwards.


You can create multiple business hours and assign them to different agent groups. To add new business hours:

  1. As an admin, go to Admin Settings > Configuration and Workflows > Business Hours.
  2. Click on the Add Business Hours button.
  3. Select the time zone your business operates in.
  4. Choose the days of the week and the hours during the day that your team will be available to engage with your customers. You can also add multiple working slots for a day and the gaps between the two slots will be considered as your team being outside your business hours.
  5. Click on the Holidays tabs if you want to add any holidays to your business hours.
  6. Click Save.

Assign business hours to Freshcaller phone numbers

If you have a Freshcaller stand-alone account or have it as an add-on, you can associate them with the purchased phone numbers and decide how you want to route the inbound calls during and outside the business hours, or during holidays.

  1. Go to Admin Settings > Channels > Phone > Manage Numbers. You can see the list of numbers in your account.
  2. Hover over the number for which you want to configure business hours and click on the Edit icon.
  3. You will see the number Properties and Call Actions tab. Switch to the Call Actions tab.
  4. Business Hours:  Select the business hours you want to assign to this number. You can also select the default 24x7 Business Hour option.
  5. Action (during business hours): Select the action to take when you receive calls during business hours. See step 8 for the list of actions.
  6. Action (outside business hours): Select the action to take if you receive calls outside working hours. See step 8 for the list of actions.
  7. Action (during holidays): Select the action to take if you receive calls during holidays. See step 8 for the list of actions
  8. For steps 5, 6, and 7, you can select the following actions:
    • Send to call queue: Select this option to route the call to a call queue. You can select a queue from the list of available in your account or create a new call queue.
    • Send to IVR Menu:  Select this option to route the call to an IVR menu. You can select an IVR name from the list available in your account or create a new IVR menu.
    • Send to Voicemail: Select this option to play a prerecorded voice message to your customers. You can select from the list of messages available in your account or create a new message.

    • Send to Agent Extension:  Select this option to route the call to an agent extension call flow. You can select a flow from the list available in your account or create a new agent extension flow.

    • Send to Routing Automation: Select this option to route the call to a routing automation call flow. You can select a flow from the list available in your account or create a new routing automation call flow.

    • Hangup: If you do not want to take any action, you can choose to hangup the call with a hangup message. This can be used for configuring calls outside your business hours or during holidays.

  9. Click Save changes

Some important pointers

  • You can add more than one Group for every Business Hour you create. But every Group in Freshchat can be associated with only one Business Hour.
  • You can configure proactive messages to engage your customers and have them not trigger outside specific business hours. In Campaign Settings, you can select the ‘Do Not Trigger Outside Business Hour’ checkbox and select a business hour from the drop-down.
  • You can create Assignment Rules based on Default and Group Business Hour settings.
  • The Response Expectations you set in your Account Settings will always take precedence over your Business Hour settings.