Nobody should hit a wall of silence because they arrived at 9pm. Between the AI assistant, business hours, and the offline form, every visitor gets something.
Business hours
Settings → AI & Engagement → Business Hours.
- Tick Enable business hours.
- Set your timezone.
- Set open hours per day, or mark a day Closed.
- Write an away message — "We're currently closed. Leave a message and we'll get back to you." Your next-open time is appended automatically, so don't write it into the message yourself; it'd go stale.
When you're closed, visitors who can't reach anyone see your away message instead of the generic offline notice. If the away message is blank, your Offline Message is used instead.
If an operator is online, visitors still reach them regardless of the schedule. Business hours describe your intent, not a lock.
What do visitors see when nobody's available?
It depends on what you've enabled, in this order:
- Auto-attendant on → the AI answers. This is the best outcome, and the reason a 3am visitor can still get their question resolved. See How the AI answers.
- Auto-attendant off, outside business hours → your away message plus next-open time.
- Auto-attendant off, no business hours set → your Offline Message and a leave-a-message form.
In every case the offline form captures the lead, and it respects the field visibility you set in Pre-Chat Form Fields.
Do escalation requests wake my team at 2am?
Not by default — that's the point of the schedule. When a visitor asks for a human outside your hours, the AI shares your away message instead of notifying anyone.
If you'd rather be pushed regardless of the clock, turn on Allow requests outside business hours under Chat Behaviour → Let visitors ask to reach a human.