Configuring business hours

Introduction

Business hours define when your team is available to respond to customer inquiries. They play a critical role in how Deskwoot calculates SLA targets and determines auto-response behavior. Configuring them correctly ensures your customers receive accurate expectations about response times and that your internal metrics reflect real working conditions.

Setting Your Hours

Follow these steps to configure your business hours in Deskwoot:

1. Navigate to Settings > Business Hours.
2. For each day of the week, toggle the availability switch to indicate whether your team is working that day.
3. For each enabled day, set the start time and end time to match your team's working schedule.
4. If your team operates the same hours on multiple days, configure each day individually to ensure accuracy.
5. Save your changes once you are satisfied with the configuration.

How Business Hours Affect Your Workspace

SLA Calculations

Deskwoot uses your configured business hours to calculate SLA timers. Time spent outside of business hours is not counted against your response or resolution targets. This means a ticket that arrives on Friday evening won't start burning through SLA time until Monday morning (assuming weekends are toggled off).

Auto-Response Behavior

When a customer reaches out outside of your defined business hours, Deskwoot can automatically send an away message letting them know when to expect a reply. This keeps customers informed and reduces frustration caused by unanswered messages.

Best-Practice Tips

• Review hours quarterly. As your team grows or shifts change, revisit your business hours to keep them aligned with actual availability.
• Account for holidays. If your team takes specific days off, update your business hours in advance so SLA calculations and auto-responses remain accurate.
• Coordinate across channels. Ensure the hours you set reflect availability across all channels. Live chat, email, and social. So customers get a consistent experience.
• Start conservative. It's better to set slightly narrower hours and consistently beat expectations than to promise availability your team can't deliver.

Common Pitfalls

• Forgetting to save changes: After adjusting your hours, always confirm the save action. Unsaved changes will not take effect.
• Leaving all days toggled on: If your team doesn't work weekends, make sure Saturday and Sunday are toggled off. Otherwise, SLA timers will run during those days and skew your metrics.
• Mismatched time zones: Double-check that the times you enter correspond to the correct time zone for your team. A mismatch can cause auto-responses to trigger at the wrong time and SLA calculations to be inaccurate.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I don't configure business hours?

If no business hours are set, Deskwoot may default to treating your workspace as available 24/7. This means SLA timers will run continuously, and no out-of-office auto-responses will be triggered.

Can I set different hours for different days?

Yes. Each day of the week has its own toggle and time range, so you can configure unique start and end times for every day. For example, shorter hours on Fridays.

Do business hours affect live chat availability?

Yes. Business hours influence when auto-responses are sent to customers who reach out via live chat. Outside of your configured hours, customers will typically see an away message instead of an active chat prompt.