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Set expectations during holidays
Set expectations during holidays

Let customers know when to expect a response while your team is out of the office for a holiday.

Laura J avatar
Written by Laura J
Updated over a week ago

There are a few ways you can set expectations with customers while you're out of the office for a holiday:


Set new office hours

Leverage your office hours to display when you'll be back in the office right from the Messenger Home, and respond to incoming chats with your expected reply time.

Go to your Settings > Workspace > Office Hours and set up the individual days you will be available, and remove the days you're out of the office.

You'll need to adjust these days before the holiday, and add them back manually afterwards.


Remove reply times from the Messenger

If you want to temporarily hide your usual reply times while you're on holiday, you can turn these off from Settings > Channels > Messenger > Conversations > Reply expectations.

This will remove any expected reply times from appearing on the Messenger Home or Messages space.

You'll need to toggle this back on when you return from holiday.


Show a special notice

You can also set a special notice to display at the top of the Messenger when a customer opens a new chat, to let people know that you're off for the holiday and will contact them when you return.

Remember to turn this notice off when you're back 😉

Please note, that it is not possible to set the location of the Special notice. It will be always displayed at the top of the conversation within the Messenger.


Direct customers to self-serve

If your team is unavailable to respond to incoming messages over the holiday, you can toggle off "Let visitors start a conversation" from Settings > Channels > Messenger > General > Control inbound volume so visitors and/or users can't start a conversation.

Use the Article Search app in the Messenger Home so customers can search for answers to their questions. You can also leverage Fin AI Agent in workflows for automated interactions.


Set up a Workflow to automatically reply to customers and/or let Fin AI Agent respond

To set up a Workflow for public holidays with delayed response times, use the trigger Customer sends their first message.

Then you can choose custom times to display the Workflow from the trigger settings. Click the start time, then hold the Shift key and click the end time.

Please keep in mind that trigger times are based on your workspace's timezone.

Create a custom message within set times to show when a customer starts a new conversation, informing them about the delayed response times during public holidays.

Then add the Let Fin answer step to your workflow so Fin can jump in and provide customers with support while your team is unavailable. If Fin isn't able to resolve the query, it can still pass to your support team for them to pick up when they're back.

The whole workflow could look like the example below 👇


FAQs

Can I schedule a special notice for the holidays instead of having to turn it on and off manually in real time?

No this currently isn't possible and is not planned for the near future. You can upvote, comment and subscribe to this feature request in our Product Wishlist.

Can I add holidays days instead of editing my existing office hours?

No, currently you must edit your office hours before your holidays and add them back after you return.


💡Tip

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