HubSpot Ideas

MikeHuggins

Auto-detect 'away' feature for chat

The messages feature is tough to manage in a busy office. I'm the only key contact for online chat. And I have various other duties.

 

I'm often 'popping up' from my computer and forgetting to turn off chat. This is causing constant frustration to those seeking quick answers.

 

I know that other like propgams have an 'auto-away' type feature that detects when your computer is dormant for 2 - 3 minutes. If so it will automatically indicate that you are away and defaults to an email response. Of course it would be great for the feature to detect when you are back 'in-use' and switch back to live chat.

 

This would be a great feature to add.

71 Replies
cl77
Participant

Following

janpark
Participant

This "feature" is a must, adding the away state after some inactivity

vvadlamani
HubSpot Product Team

Hi everyone,

 

I’m Vijay, the Product Manager for HubSpot’s Conversations Inbox tool. Thank you for taking the time to submit and upvote this idea. At this time there are no plans to work on this Idea as we are focused on building out the core functionality for Inbox and have priortized other chat related feature request.  This is not to say that this idea will never be developed, just that there are no plans to do so at this time.

 

Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

 

Regards,

Vijay Vadlamani

EJD
Member

If not an auto-detect feature, it would be nice for an administrator to be able to mark someone else as away if they forgot to do it themselves.

cdewey22
HubSpot Product Team

@EJD we actually have that in beta now. I just added you to my list for tomorrow and will get this added to your portal. I will follow up with an email when the details. Thanks!

 

stageslearning
Member

@cdewey22 Please add me to the beta as well

janpark
Participant

@cdewey22 Please add me too!! and/or my client's portal.

cl77
Participant

@cdewey22 Please add me too, thanks. 

cdewey22
HubSpot Product Team

Hi all- 

 

I have added you all above to my list for today or reached out to you directly for more information.

 

Just to clarify this beta will provide insight into your chat team’s availability status and adds the ability for Admins and Super Admins to control the individual user’s chat status to available and away. We will be looking into additional availability controls later this year and into next year so keep an eye out for this feature to continue to evolve. 

 

If anyone else is interested in the Team Management beta, here is the form to fill out. 

 

claudia_vesta
Participant

I have signed up to the beta testing for Auto-detect 'away' feature - keen to see this released!

Kels214
Member

We need this SO badly! I accidentally forgot to sign out and got a chat while I was gone. Led to a bad user experience 😞

mikedupuy
Contributor | Gold Partner

+1, Would be a much better user experience if when connected to an agent who is away, the chat could re-route to another agent or display an unavailable message after a certain period of inactivity.

annabeldarling
Member

Even with the new team management features available - we still need to manually check that the availablity settings for each agent are correct. This is becoming a real problem for us as we are missing chats coming into agents that are on annual leave and forget to log out etc. Ideally I'd be able to set global settings for when chats/bots are available (not just within each chatflow, but also global settings) 

 

This makes the chat features really problematic for us, and not at all scalable. I've never used chat software that doesn't have auto-away/availability timeout based on user activity. I'm really disappointed to know that this isn't even planned as it's so basic, and is causing some really bad user-experiences for customers that have their questions missed/ignored. 

janpark
Participant

@annabeldarling I completely agree with you, this is greatly needed, the manual availability check isn't enough.
This seemingly basic feature to mark 'unlogged' users as 'Away' is not even planned. Hopefully, HubSpot's product team would check this feature request soon, after 3 years.

KSarpu
Member

We run into the same issue. It's a pretty basic feature on other live chats. I think Zendesk has this available. However, it seems like an easy feature for hubspot to add. If no one responds within a set amount of time, generate a generic message, such as "Looks like no one is available at this time. Please leave a message and we will email you as soon as possible." 

contentmarketer
Participant

I agree, would be great if it could detect inactivity. I'd love if it could sync with your calendar as well so if you are "busy" and have a calendar meeting, it would show you as away.

FredStave
Member

We need to have this "auto" detect away feature as well. I am sure it can be done in several ways, but most importantly that this feature is being resolved and launched by HubSpot. I understand it is basic functionality on other solutions, e.g. ZenDesk. Should be a no-brainer and we definately need is ASAP.

 

And I see this idea is posted back in 2017 already? @hubspot - no need to wait no more!

JoeMayall
HubSpot Alumni

Hey folks! 

I saw some chatter on this thread so I wanted to hop in and give an update. I can confirm this feature request is still not currently planned. This doesn't mean that we'll never explore this feature, or that we're opposed to building it, just that it isn't on our current Roadmap.

 

Best,

Joe

JusinP
Participant

+1 for this one t

DVoyta-Pet
Member

+1 for this idea. It's causing so many issues with our chat roll-out that we don't have this type of a feature.