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Business Hours and Auto-Responder

Business Hours tell ChannelX when your team is actually available. Once configured, they drive three things:

  1. Out-of-office replies — customers who message you outside working hours get a helpful response instead of silence.
  2. SLA timer behaviour — when an SLA is set to respect business hours, the clock stops overnight and on weekends rather than running around the clock.
  3. Reporting accuracy — response-time metrics can be measured against working time, so overnight gaps don't distort your numbers.

Business Hours are set per inbox, so a US support inbox and an EU support inbox can run completely different schedules.

Info

Only administrators can configure an inbox's business hours and out-of-office message.

Setting up business hours

  1. Go to Settings → Inboxes and open the inbox you want to configure.
  2. Open the Business Hours tab.
  3. Turn on Enable business availability for this inbox.
  4. Choose your timezone, every schedule time is interpreted in this timezone.
  5. For each day of the week, either set a start and end time, mark it closed all day, or mark it open all day.
  6. Write a short, useful out-of-office message. Something like "Thanks for reaching out! Our team is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm. We'll get back to you first thing tomorrow." works well as a default.
  7. Save.

What customers see

When a customer sends a message to an inbox that is currently closed, ChannelX automatically replies on the same channel with your out-of-office message. A customer messaging your WhatsApp inbox at midnight gets the reply on WhatsApp.

A few rules keep the auto-reply from being annoying:

  • It is sent once per day per conversation, repeated messages from the same customer that day won't trigger another.
  • If an agent posted a public reply in the last 5 minutes, the auto-reply is suppressed, so a conversation still being actively handled at closing time isn't interrupted.

The auto-reply is purely informational. It doesn't block the customer from sending more messages and it doesn't change the conversation status. The conversation arrives normally and agents pick it up when the inbox is back in hours.

How business hours affect SLA timers

If an SLA is configured with Only during business hours turned on, its timer pauses outside working hours. For example:

  • A customer messages on Friday 6pm with a 4-hour SLA.
  • The inbox is closed from 6pm Friday until 9am Monday.
  • The timer doesn't run over the weekend.
  • The effective deadline is Monday 1pm, four working hours after the 9am Monday open.

If business hours are off, on either the SLA or the inbox, the timer runs 24/7, and Friday 6pm + 4 hours simply lands at Friday 10pm.

How business hours appear in reports

Most reports include a Business hours toggle. When it is on, metrics like Average First Response Time and Resolution Time are calculated against working time only, overnight gaps don't count against you.

Common questions

Can different days have different hours? Yes. Each day's start and end times are independent. Running Saturday 10am to 2pm while weekdays run 9 to 6 is perfectly normal.

Can I set business hours for the whole account at once? Not directly, each inbox has its own schedule. If many inboxes should share hours, set them on each. This is also a strength, since teams in different timezones often staff different inboxes.

Does ChannelX block incoming messages outside business hours? No. The inbox always accepts messages. Business hours only control what the customer is shown and how the timers behave.

How do I handle a holiday? There is no built-in holiday calendar. Temporarily mark that day as closed all day, then revert it afterward.