Set your work timings with Business Hours

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 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.


How to set up Business Hours

  • Go to Admin > Business Hours
  • You can have either one Default Business hour for all your teams or multiple Business hours for your different teams (Groups)



Note: Default business hour settings are available from the Growth plan. Business hours for Groups are available from the Pro plan.



  • You can also set up multiple working hours for each day considering your team’s break hours 
    • The gap between two working hour slots will be considered a break. And the Away message will be sent to any user during these breaks and during out-of-office hours.



  • You can add a new Business Hour by clicking Add Business Hour



  • Give your Business Hour a name, pick a time zone, enter your Away Message, and select the groups for which you want this Business Hour to be applicable 
  • Finally, set the time intervals for each day of the week



Some important pointers

  • You can add multiple Business Hours if you are on the Pro (or above) plan in Freshchat. If you are on the Growth (or above) plan, you can only set up Default Business Hour, which will apply to all your teams.
  • 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. If you have a Group called‘ US Customer Support’ and have mapped it to a Business Hour called ‘US Teams,’ you cannot map it to another Business Hour in parallel. On the other hand, you can have another Group "US Delivery Support" which can also be mapped to the same 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 always take precedence over Business Hour settings.