Business hours

Plans and permissions:

• Create, edit, or delete business hours: Admin role, or a custom role with Company default settings set to Can edit company default settings on the Configure tab
• To create, edit, or delete business hours, a custom role also needs the Admin base role.

Use business hours to tell Assembled when your team is open on each channel and, where hours differ, on individual queues. Assembled uses them to decide when live chat handled by AI agents can hand off to your team, to measure business-hours versions of metrics such as first response time and service level, and, if you choose, to keep forecasts and staffing requirements out of hours you’re closed.

To open it, go to Configure > Business hours.

How business hours work

• Channel-level hours are the default for a channel, such as chat or email. They apply to every queue in that channel that doesn’t have its own hours.
• Queue-level hours override the channel’s hours for that queue only. You don’t need to set hours for every queue: add queue-level hours only for queues whose hours differ from the channel’s.
• Each business hours entry has its own time zone, so a queue staffed from another region can keep hours local to that team. Hours follow the time zone, including across daylight saving time changes.
• A channel with no business hours is treated as always open. Chat handoffs don’t switch to a fallback based on the time of day, and business-hours metrics have no hours to measure against.

For example: your chat channel is open from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, but your Billing queue is only staffed from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Set 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM for the chat channel, and add queue-level hours for Billing from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Every other chat queue follows the channel’s hours.

What business hours affect

• Live chat availability and handoffs: outside business hours, chat escalations go to your configured fallback, such as email or a case form, and customers can be shown when your team is next available. When a queue is outside its hours, wait-time estimates for that queue aren’t shown, so customers don’t see misleading numbers.
• Metrics and reporting: metrics such as first response time, service level, wait time, and volume have business-hours versions, so performance is measured against the hours you’re open.
• Forecasting and staffing requirements: depending on your setup, staffing requirements can be set to zero outside business hours, so forecasts and generated schedules don’t ask you to staff times you’re closed.
• SLAs for email and back-office channels: SLA targets can be measured in working time instead of clock time. For example, a 24-hour SLA on a case that arrives on Friday afternoon is due on Monday, not Saturday.

To have business hours shape your forecasts and staffing requirements, contact our team.

Create business hours

1. Go to Configure > Business hours.

   

2. Select Create business hours.

   

3. Choose the Channel.

4. Optional: choose one or more Queues, if these hours apply to specific queues rather than the whole channel. With no queues, one channel-wide schedule is created. With several, one schedule is created for each queue.

5. Under Days of the week, select the days you’re open. Days you don’t select are closed.

6. Enter the Start time and End time. To set different hours on different days, select Set different hours for each day and enter hours for each day. To add a second range in a day, such as 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, select Add hours on that day.

7. Choose the Time zone the hours follow.

8. Select Create schedule. If you chose several queues, the button reads Create followed by the number of schedules, such as Create 3 schedules.

The new hours appear in the list with their channel, queue, time zone, hours, and whether they’re open now.

Keep in mind: Each range must start and end on the same day. For hours that run past midnight, such as 4:00 PM to 2:00 AM, set 4:00 PM to midnight on the first day, and add the rest as a range on the following day.

To change hours later, open the entry’s actions menu, select Edit, make your changes, and select Save changes.

Delete business hours

Important: Deleting a channel’s business hours makes that channel, and every queue that uses its hours, open 24/7. Deleting a queue’s business hours makes that queue follow the channel’s hours again.

1. Go to Configure > Business hours.
2. Find the entry you want to remove.
3. Open its actions menu and select Delete. To delete several entries, select their checkboxes and use the toolbar above the list instead.
4. Confirm.