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.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Turn on your Business Hours

To turn on your default or universal Business Hours, 

  • Login to Freshchat as an admin
  • Go to Admin > General Settings > 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

If you want to edit your default Business Hours,

  • Click on the three dots next to the enable button to open the business hours settings
  • Change the time zone to the one your business operates in
  • 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
  • Enter the Away Message which will be sent to customers if they reach out to you outside your business hours
  • 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,

  • Click on the three dots next to the enable button
  • Select the Holidays tab
  • Click on the Add holidays button
  • Select the date and year of the holiday you want to add
  • Enter the name of the holiday
  • If you want to add another holiday, check the Add another option
  • Click on Save 




Set up multiple business hours 

If you are on the Pro or Enterprise plan, you can create multiple business hours and assign them to different agent groups.


To add new business hours,

  • Login to Freshchat as an admin
  • Go to Admin > General Settings > Business Hours
  • Click on the Add Business Hours button
  • Select the time zone your business operates in
  • 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.
  • Click on the Holidays tabs if you want to add any holidays to your business hours.
  • Then, click on Save. 



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.