Question
How do I prevent new chats when I don't have any agents on duty? Can I hide the widget when my agents are offline?
Answer
To prevent new chats when no staff is available, set up schedules and use offline forms as alternatives to chat.
The setup differs for live chat and messaging. To see which one you use, see Am I using live chat or messaging?.
With live chat
In live chat, customers can't start a chat when:
- All your agents are logged out
- Your agents set their status to Invisible in the Chat dashboard or Agent Workspace
If you don't enable an offline form or a contact form, the widget doesn't appear on your website when your staff is offline.
You may also want more control over when chat is available:
- Set up operating hours to turn off chat on a schedule
Use these workflows:
- Define lunch hours: Recipe: Setting up a lunch schedule for Zendesk Chat
- Notify customers when chat hours are about to end: Recipe: Chat trigger to notify the end of operating hours
- Keep customers out of departments that are already offline: Can I stop visitors who load the widget before operating hours end from being routed to offline departments?
After you configure operating hours, choose the offline experience for your customers. Most Zendesk users set up a form so customers can leave a message, and your team can reply when staff returns. The setup varies by widget.
To check which widget you use, see Which Zendesk widget do I have with my account and website?.
Web Widget Classic
In the Web Widget Classic version, show either the offline form described above or a more customizable contact form. A contact form lets you add custom fields and create tickets from the requests.
| This is an example of what your customers would see if you enabled the contact form and are offline. You can add additional fields to this form. |
If you're not sure about the differences between these forms, see What is the difference between the offline form and contact form?.
With messaging
For customers, a messaging conversation is continuous. It can pause and resume and has no clear end point. Messaging works like conversations in social media apps where the conversation can pick up at any time.
You can't turn off messaging or prevent customers from picking up where they left off. The Web Widget is persistent and stays available to support bot conversations.
Instead, notify customers when staff isn't available and set expectations about when they'll hear back.
To do this:
- Set up business hours
- Add a business hours condition in your bot to send a message to customers
| Example of what customers see when you're closed. You can fully customize this text. |