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[Legacy] Opening Hours Explained

  • Updated

This article covers how to trigger the Out of Hours reply when conversations take place outside of your agents' working hours.

Note - This is a legacy solution, and has been replaced with the more dynamic and flexible solution of Operating Hours, which supports multiple business hours that can be created for a more flexible, personalized approach.

 

This article covers: 

You might want to read about the Out of Hours reply to get the full picture of this feature. 

 

What are Opening Hours?

Opening Hours allows you to customize your bot according to the office hours of your live agents. This does NOT affect the display of your bot widget as that is controlled via your CRM platform. When Opening Hours are turned on, customers will see the relevant Out of Hours reply if available.
When Opening Hours is on, chat visitors will get the main reply during the opening hours defined in our Dashboard, and the Out of Hours reply outside of those hours.

If you leave it off, only the main reply is used. 

❌  Make sure there is an Out of Hours reply under all relevant intents before turning this on to avoid an error.

 

When creating these Out of Hours replies you can, for example, remove escalations to agents and opt for creating a ticket instead.

Enabling Opening Hours

To enable Opening Hours:

  1. Login to Ultimate's Dashboard and select your bot. If you have more than one bot, make sure to select the bot you want to enable this in first
  2. Go to Settings > Bot Settings > Opening Hours
  3. Toggle on Use Opening Hours
  4. Select the timezone your agents to operate in
  5. Set your opening days and hours
  6. Click Save

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✅  All set! 

 

Now that the days and hours are defined, conversations starting outside these opening hours will trigger out-of-hours replies. You will need to create Out of Hours replies for each relevant intent. Learn how to do it here.

 

Enabling "Use OOH Replies When Agents Are Offline"

OOH replies are used when bots are on 24/7 but agent support is not. Enable it if you would like the Out of Hours reply to be used when your agents are offline or not available during office hours.

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