Question
When is my live chat option available to my customers? How can I reference a schedule for my agent's availability when using live chat, Chat in Agent Workspaces, or the bot builder in messaging?
Answer
Options will vary based on what Chat experience you are using. Refer to the below to see when chat is available based on which version of Chat is being used.
Live-Chat and Chat in Agent Workspace
The live chat option is only presented to your customers if one of your agents has set their availability status to Online. If none of your agents are online, set up the offline form or contact form to allow your customers to contact your team.
You can create a schedule of operating hours that keeps all agent statuses offline outside of your scheduled hours. If it is outside of operating hours, the option to live chat won't be available.
Messaging and bot builder
Messaging offers persistent conversations and will display at all times. You can add a condition that references your scheduled business hours in Support. To set a schedule in Support, see the article: Setting your schedule with business hours and holidays.
Add a business hours condition in the bot builder to apply your schedule to the messaging widget which can create different bot responses based on your schedule.
4 Comments
Do we still have the availability to offer chat during Operating Hours, regardless of agent status?
For example, if our Operating Hours begin at 8am, and no agent changes their status to 'Available' until 8:02am, why wouldn't the customer be allowed to begin the chat and wait in the queue for those 2 minutes?
Hi Shaun,
If no agents are online, the system will not offer chat to your customers, even if your operating hours have started. If you enable operating hours, your widget can only be online during the operating hours you've set.
Hi, I'm setting up the messaging option in our account, with the web widget I'm able to select the available hours and create different responses for online and offline hours.
If I enable answering with the bot I see the option to set a schedule dissapears. Is it possible to set available and unavailable hours while using the bot?
Thanks
Once you have enabled Messaging you can utilize Flow Builder and use the step "Add Business hours condition" to designate a message depending on your operating hours.
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