This article illustrates how to set up business hours. With the business hours function, you can flexibly adjust the business hours and holidays of a help desk. You can also set an auto reply method and language for the help desk.

In addition, you can set Time off in lieu for public holidays, including New Year's Day, Spring Festival, National Day, and schedule customer service agents to work on these dates.

I. Intro

With Business Hours, you can easily adjust the working shifts and holiday plans of agents from Help Desk, or change settings of automatic replies.

II. Steps

1. Set the Time Zone

Go to Settings - Business Hours, choose the current Time Zone, eg. (GMT+08:00) China Standard Time - Beijing.

Click + Add Hours to add multiple business hours. You can also delete unwanted time slots on the same page.

Note: The time zone is the reference time of Business Hours.

2. Set public holidays

Click Add Holidays, enter the start and end dates and click Confirm to add a holiday.

Enter Holiday name, Time off in lieu date, click OK to complete the addition.

On the admin console, administrators can add Time off in lieu. In the Time off in lieu field, select dates when the help desk would usually be closed and schedule customer service agents who will work on the lieu duration. Then, the customer service business hours of the help desk will be as follows:

(Help Desk Business Hours ∩ Customer Service Period - Vacation Time) ∪ Time off in lieu

For example, if the help desk business hours are set to Everyday, the customer service period is Monday to Friday, and Chinese New Year's 2022 is from Jan 31 to Feb 6, with the 29th and 30th as Saturday and Sunday when staff are required to work, you must select Jan 29 and Jan 30 as time off in lieu. Now, the help desk will be available Monday to Friday, except for Jan 31 to Feb 6 and with the additional days Jan 29 and Jan 30.

Note: The specific help desk business hours in time off in lieu are consistent with the set service period. To set business hours for a service period, go to Manage > Business Hours.

Click Import Holidays to choose corresponding holiday calendar from the drop-down menu.

Open the extended menu on the right. You can then modify or delete the chosen holiday.

3.Set Auto Reply

You can set the following three types of replies:

•We are not at office now and we will reply soon after we come back.

•We are not at office now and cannot reply, we will get back to you soon after #next_business_hour#.

•Write your own reply in 1000 characters, click Save to apply.

Note: If multi-language mode is on, the auto-reply can be set in multiple languages. Choose a language first before selecting the content of reply.

4.Manage agents

Go to Agent - Add agent to arrange shifts for individual agents. Only time within the business hours is available for arrangement.

Note: When the user is already in the queue, the agent will finish answering all questions even if they exceed the business hours. No more queuing is allowed outside the business hours.