Create multiple schedules with operating hours to set an offline schedule that serves as a lunch break for your Chat agents. This workflow contains the below steps.
Step 1: Add agents to a department
To set up schedules, you must first add your agents to departments.
To add agents to a department
- In your Chat dashboard, navigate to Settings > Departments and click the department you want to edit. If you didn't set up a department yet, click Add department to create a new department.
- Add your agents to the department. If you don’t already use departments, you can add all your agents to the same one.
- Click Save changes
Step 2: Create the schedules
Create morning and afternoon schedules with a 1-hour interval allocated as your agents' lunch break.
To create the schedules
- Go to Settings > Account and click the Operating Hours tab
- In the upper-right corner of the page, click On
- Go to the Department tab and click Add schedule. Name your new schedule.
- Set the Schedule status to Enabled
- In the Schedule type field, select Daily
- Select the check box next to each day of the week that has operating hours. For example, check Monday to Friday if you're online on weekdays.
- Adjust the sliders next to each day to set the hours when agents are available to chat. For example, 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM for the morning schedule.
- Click Add schedule to create the afternoon schedule
- Repeat the steps to create the afternoon schedule. Make sure that the days selected are the same. In this example, the second schedule is from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.
- Click Save changes
What's next
If you need coverage during lunch time, create two morning and two afternoon schedules that overlap, and assign different departments to each schedule.
For example, add two morning schedules from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Then, add two afternoon schedules from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, and 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.
For more information, see the article: Creating a schedule with operating hours.
9 comments
Rina
Looks great, is there a way to do something similar for Zendesk Messaging?
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Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Rina, you can use Support business hours instead of legacy chat operating hours feature for messaging to manage schedules. :)
More info here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408842938522-Setting-your-schedule-with-business-hours-and-holidays
Thanks!
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Rina
I don't see anything in that article that highlights where we can set specific hours towards inbound Answerbot/Live messaging. I've looked in settings for Admin but nothing obvious either. Can you advise further Audrey Ann Cipriano
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Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Rina, apologies for the confusion. Live messaging relies on Support business hours and it is enforced by using a step inside of Flow Builder and a specific schedule.
Here is the post about flow builder and the business schedule condition: http://ttps://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408838909210-Using-Flow-Builder-to-create-bot-flows
Thank you!
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Rina
Ah great, yes I'm with you now thanks Audrey Ann Cipriano
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Audrey Ann Cipriano
You're welcome, Rina! I'm happy to help! :)
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Aleksander Pietkiewicz
Hello,
I'm writing to you because we have a small problem. We have clients writing to us on live chat before the opening hours. Note that we have set the opening hours and there is also an offline form created just for this occassion. This however doesn't happen. Just today we had a client begin a live chat eventhough we were set as "out-of-office" at this moment of the day. Is there perhaps something that we missed in the configuration? Lastly, is there no other way to contact your company other than comments in a given thread?
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Michael Yuen
The problem with this approach (versus being able to set an account-based schedule with multiple start/stop times in a day) is this: when using the department-centered chat schedule, your customer will then see a drop-down menu from which they can choose a department/group to chat with--even if that's the only department.
And while you can make choosing a department optional, you cannot hide the Choose a department feature completely.
Or am I missing something?
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Anne Ronalter
"There is no native setting that will remove the department field entirely. In your pre-chat form settings, unchecking Require Department doesn't remove the field from the pre-chat form but it will make it optional."
More details can be found here:
Can I hide the department field on the pre-chat form?
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