Set Business Hours for Live Chat

Business hours stop visitors from waiting on a chat nobody is watching. Outside your hours, the widget switches to collecting contact details instead.

Turn it on

1. Go to Sites > Chat Widget and open a Live Chat widget.
2. Open the Chat Window tab.
3. Find Business Office Hour Setup and enable it.
4. For each day from Sunday to Saturday, add one or more time ranges. Ranges on the same day cannot overlap.
5. Use the copy option to apply a day's hours to other days at once.
6. Edit the Outside Office Hours Welcome Message. The default reads "We are currently offline."
7. Click Save.

How it behaves

• During hours: visitors see your normal live chat welcome message and can chat.
• Outside hours: visitors get your offline message and a contact details form. Once they submit it, the chat closes automatically.
• Times follow your business's time zone.

Tips

• If a notification sound is enabled, visitors may hear it when the offline message appears.
• Combine this with a workflow that notifies a team member whenever someone leaves details after hours, so nothing waits until morning.

Good to know: The hours editor works just like calendar availability, so the same habits apply.