Share your expected response time

Set your customers' expectations by sharing your reply time inside office hours.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over a week ago

Share your reply time

Once you’ve set your office hours, you can share your expected reply time inside office hours.

Go to Messenger > General settings > Office hours and reply times, where you'll find the section to Share your reply time.

This sets your customer’s expectation for when they should expect a response from your team within your office hours. You can do this by: 

  • Setting your reply time manually - just select ‘In a few minutes’, ‘In a few hours’ or ‘In a day’ as your reply time. 

  • Or selecting ‘Dynamic reply time.' This pulls in your team’s median first reply time over the past 7 days. We calculate your automatic reply time within your office hours. Review your office hours now to ensure they’re accurate.

This allows your customer to plan their next move based on real information. For example, if your team normally responds in a few minutes, your customer might choose to wait for your response there and then.

Or if you normally respond within a few hours they’ll know to move on to doing something else. 

Note: It is not possible to turn off 'Share your reply time' in your Messenger settings

How your automatic reply time is calculated

  • We calculate your median first reply time over the past 7 days, updated daily.

  • If you've set your office hours, we'll calculate your automatic reply time within the office hours you've set. We recommend setting your office hours as this will ensure you get a more accurate automatic reply time. 

  • We only use new inbound conversations to calculate the automatic reply time, not replies to proactive support messages.

  • It's calculated including any bot interaction times, which is why the expected reply time might differ a bit from the FRT in your Inbox Reports.

If you've had fewer than 5 conversations in 7 days, we'll display "replies as soon as they can".

Set custom office hours and reply times for different teams

If you have multiple international teams in different timezones, you can add custom office hours that match each team’s timezone.

For example, if your app's local timezone is Los Angeles (Pacific Time) and you have a support team in New York, you can add office hours from 6am-2pm Los Angeles time (that's 9am-5pm in New York).

Team-specific reply times only apply to bot messages within a conversation using Basics or Workflows, and not to the reply time quoted in the Messenger heading UI.

How do we determine what reply time gets shown to your customers

  • Where office hours are set and the user is outside of those hours, they will be shown office hours.

  • If office hours are not set or the user is inside of office hours, they will be shown reply times.

  • Team values for both office hours and reply times take precedence over the Workspace defaults when they apply.

  • Team values apply when we are in the context of a conversation that has been assigned to a team.

  • Team values are used by Workflows when a conversation has been assigned to a team. Otherwise they fall back to Workspace values for office hours and reply times.

  • If "Dynamic" reply time is enabled but we don’t have enough data to calculate a value, we show “as soon as possible”.


How your reply time is sent

Outside of your office hours, the bot will send your reply time immediately, so customers can quickly see when you'll be available.

In Basics

During office hours you can choose if the bot should send the reply time right away, or wait two minutes to give your team time to respond. You can configure it for leads and users separately in the Automation > Basics.

In Workflows

You can also send an expected reply time when building a Workflow. Simply click on the + icon and then choose Show expected reply time.


Manage unexpected delays

If you experience a spike in conversations due to an outage, a big promotion or an external event, this can lead to longer wait times for your customers. Let them know with a special notice in your Messenger. 👌


In Messenger > Conversations > Special notice, you can switch this on and enter a message for your customers:

Then, any time a visitor, lead, or user starts a conversation in your Messenger, they'll see the special notice.

If Automations (Workflows) & AI Chatbot (Fin) are involved in a conversation, the Special Notice will not appear.

After things have returned to normal for your team, simply switch the notice off and it will no longer be shown in conversations.


They’ll see if your team is active 

When a teammate replies to your customer’s message, they’ll see if that teammate is active in your product. This helps to manage your customer’s expectations. If the teammate is active, for example, your customer will know they’ll likely get a response soon. 


They’ll know when you’re typing too 

Once you start writing a reply, your customer can see that you're typing in real-time. This cue lets them know your reply is coming shortly.


💡Tip

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