TABLE OF CONTENTS

As a business, you can proactively convey when you are available with an Away (Offline) Experience to your customers. You can also prompt customers and leads to leave a message and their email or phone number, which you can use to get back to them later once you are back online.

  1. Setting the right expectations upfront will help prevent customer frustration and reduce the number of Away (Offline) conversations you might get
  2. Prompt customers and prospects to leave a message and their contact info - this will be helpful for you to get back to them once you are back online
  3. Manage all away (Offline) conversations separately
  4. Auto-convert away (Offline) conversations into tickets to match your workflow


You can enable the Away (Offline) Experience for all your Topics or specific Topics. When a visitor or customer clicks on a Topic to start a conversation with you, it will be visible to them in Away (Offline) mode.


In Away (Offline) mode, the Topic name will have an Away (Offline) label attached to it, and there will be an Away (Offline) prompt for your customers to enter their email id/phone number (which you can choose) and a message.


How will the Away (Offline) Experience appear for a customer

When a customer clicks on a Topic for which you have enabled Away (Offline) Experience, it gets activated. They

will be prompted to enter their email ID or their phone number.




Note: The reply text box will not be visible when the Away (Offline) experience is active.


Once they enter their details, it will appear as a chat message — and the reply text box will become visible. 



The customer can still send follow-up messages, and they will be appended to the same message thread. The Away (Offline) Experience prompt will be triggered again post 30 minutes from the last customer message.

 

How can team members differentiate Away (Offline) messages from regular chat messages?

It is easy to identify Away (Offline) messages in Freshchat with a half-moon icon. These include:

  • Any new conversations initiated when you are Away (Offline)
  • Any resolved conversations that were reopened because a customer reached out while you were away

This will help your team members identify messages that came in during out-of-office hours and prioritize their work.



You can also create custom views specifically for Away (Offline) messages.


 

How to set up the Away (Offline) Experience 

  • Go to Admin Settings > Away Experience > switch the toggle to Enabled
  • Select the Topics for which you want to trigger the Away (Offline) prompt and add your Away (Offline) message
  • You can also add Away (Offline) messages in other languages based on your language settings.



  • You can get the user’s phone number or email ID, and even add a thank you message at the end


 

Automatically convert Away (Offline) messages into tickets

Once you have integrated your account with Freshdesk, you can automatically convert your Away (Offline) messages into tickets.


Under Advanced settings, move the toggle to the right to enable ticket conversion. Set a duration after which the conversation will be auto-resolved and converted into a ticket. You can also label these conversations for easy identification later.


 

Note:
1. Once the time duration has expired, the conversation is resolved and converted into a ticket.
2. All the messages the customer sends within this time period get converted into one ticket.
3. This feature of converting the chats automatically into tickets by advanced settings is possible only on the omnichannel chat account