Office Hours

Avochato allows you to set customized Office Hours for your team. These are unique sets of hours per inbox when your team will be able to respond to inbound requests. By setting up office hours, you have the ability to set an auto response to alert incoming contacts if they have reached you outside of normal operating hours.

Note: this article covers Office Hour settings for your inbox. You may also configure an After Hours response on Live Chat widgets. More on that here

Office hours can be configured by going to Settings > Office Hours. Office hours are a recurring weekly schedule broken down by day of the week. To set Office Hours for the first time, click “Add Office Hours” for the particular day of the week and slide to the desired start and end time. When finished, click “Save” in the top right corner. You can edit office hours at any time by going back and adjusting these selections and clicking “Save.”

Note: By default, Office Hours will always display in your computer’s local time. You can also manually select a time zone using the dropdown at the top of the page.

Once you have set your office hours you can set an auto response to send when contacts message you after hours. To draft this message, navigate to Settings > Auto Responses > “Auto-Reply when you are out of the Office”. Enter the desired message, switch this setting to ON, and click “Save” in the top right corner.

If your account is configured to forward inbound calls to another number, you have the option to restrict call forwarding to only take place during Office Hours. To restrict call forwarding hours, navigate to Settings > Call Forwarding > “Only Forward Calls During Office Hours”

Each user in your organization also has the option to switch off notifications for activity that occurs outside of Office Hours. To switch off after hours notifications, click your profile in the top right corner > Edit My Profile. Under “Mobile App Push Notifications” check the box for “Only send pushes during office hours” and click “Save” in the top right corner.

Each account has the ability to set a “cool down” period for triggering auto responses (including but not limited to after hours responses). The purpose of this cool down, is so that a back and forth conversation late in the workday is not interrupted by an automated response.

This can be configured by navigating to Settings > Auto Responses > “Enable Triggering Auto-Replies After Inactivity”. To set a cool down period, ensure this is switched ON and set your desired time period. Click “Save” when done.

Note: If you do not want to set a cool down period, switch this feature ON and set the time period to “0.” Switching the feature off will set an indefinite cool down (auto response would only send once, ever.)