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Office hours and offline chats

Set your office hours and holidays in RetroChat, choose what happens during them, and capture visitors' emails when nobody is online.

Visitors arrive at all hours. RetroChat makes sure they're never left waiting in silence.

Office hours

Open Office hours and turn on Use office hours. Then:

  1. Pick your timezone.
  2. Set your opening times for each day of the week.
  3. Add holidays: dates when you're closed all day.

During office hours

Choose what visitors get while you're open:

  • Start the chatbot as usual. Your flow runs, and hands off to your team when needed.
  • Connect visitors straight to the team. The chatbot is skipped. Visitors see your greeting, and their first message goes straight to your inbox.

Outside office hours, the chatbot runs as usual. Your flow can also check the built-in office_open variable to say something different after hours. See Variables and conditions.

When nobody is online

If a visitor asks for a person, or the chatbot hands off, while nobody on your team is online:

  1. The widget shows your offline message.
  2. RetroChat asks for their email, if you don't have it yet.
  3. The conversation waits in your inbox, with a note showing the email they left.
  4. Your owners and admins get an email alert, so you can follow up first thing.

You can change the offline message, and turn off the email request, under Widget. See Customize the widget.

Tips

  • Be honest about timing: "We'll reply by 10am tomorrow" beats "We'll be right with you".
  • Check agents_online in your flow before promising a fast reply. The sample flow shows how.
  • On the Autopilot plan, an AI answer step can handle common questions around the clock. See AI assistant.