HubSpot Ideas

TheoB

Better Controls for Chat Availability - Office Hours / User Availability

Hi there, it would be great to have better controls for user availability for chat. 

 

1 - let us set different office hours for different chat flows

We have offices in multiple time zones - California and London - these use different chat flows routed to different teams. We cannot set office hours right now because we have to set it universally for all the chat flows. 

 

2 - let sales users schedule their chat availability

The above wouldn't be a problem if we could automatically schedule chat availability - just like the meetings links - as well as manually toggling it on and off. 

 

Right now, our sales reps have to manually toggle their availability. If they forget, we end up with angry messages from disappointed visitors who expected to talk to a human and got a bot and then an away message. 

 

Given we're forced not to use 'business hours', giving individual sales reps this tool would avoid mistakes. 

 

I think this feature really matters if you have a small team multi-tasking on chat - if you have lots of dedicated people there will always be someone availabile, but thats not the case for smaller companies that use hubspot. 

26 Replies
zwepss
Member

It would be great if HS Chat availabilty could be automatically changed by

  • Time frame per agent
  • Availability based on Google Calander
  • Availability based on Slack avaiability.
Jrushak97
Member

Having the ability to set office and chat hours would be ideal for my company. We currently have to sign in to HubSpot, then turn the chat on to available when we arrive.

 

Many times we have missed out on sales opportunities because we get distracted or simply forget to change our availability from away to available. 

Can we please look into having a chat setting for availability based time as well as the current manual availability option for the chat? Thoughts?

 

Thank you!

fpinkney
Member

For us, the ability to set individual availability hours is a must. Availability based on Slack/Outlook calendar would be fantastic. The ability to see who is available at any given time as well would be important as many of our team work remotely. 

kfreeborn
Member

Right now our team is working remotely and their availability is based on very specific hours.  Having availability options (i.e. OUtlook calander) would be great.

tmcginnis
Top Contributor | Elite Partner

YES! I had assumed chat user could set their individual availability, just like they can with the meetings tool, only to find out that this isn't possible at the moment.

 

Would love for each individual user in Sales or Service hub to have the power to set their own availability times. HubSpot would then automatically mark them as "Available" during those times, which they could then manually override if needed.

CarinaAndresen
Member

We are hoping for a possibility to preset the dates the chat is unattended, or with a message that we're not available. It would be awesome if we didnt have to turn the chat off manually every Christmas or easter, when we know we wont be available.

 

LBrown25
Member

Yes agree with this!

 

We are an after-hours emergency hospital and have a chatbot on at odd hours, so at night-time when our clients need the most help we are there. However, during the day we want to put on a different chatbot, that allows us to email leads automatically to our client care team (who mostly work during the day) with an emphasis on reducing the number of inbound calls our business sees. 

 

Without this ability we cannot do this - I would have thought this would be a very quick fix!!

TrujayJay
Top Contributor | Elite Partner

Hi HubSpot team! This is really needed because for each team member to remember to mark themselves available is resulting in many missed opportunities, likely for a good majority of your customer base using Conversations. Are there any plans to expand on the availability feature?


Trujay | Jay Hendricks

AggieAshley
Member

We have the same question as above. I can't deploy the chatbot unless I can sync it with calendar availability - remembering to toggle availability isn't an option. Please let us know when this will be possible. 

Welho
Participant

Struggling with the same issues mentioned in this thread. We have teams in different timezones and setting universal business hours for the live chat is not an option. At the same time it's too easy to forget to set the availability status for oneself so that is not the ideal solution for us either.

Therefore a direct sync with the agents calendars would be the best solution, but if that's not an option then at least let us set the availability times per team and/or agent!

GlennW
Participant

I agree, we have exactly the same requests from our teams. In this case New Zealand, Australia and San Francisco USA. 

Having the ability for operators to set their own hours makes sense. 

TrujayJay
Top Contributor | Elite Partner

Seriously needed.

MJansson
Member

Much needed feature for our teams in APAC, EMEA and NORAM too.  I'm currently considering setting the chatbot to 24h availablity, creating a scedule for our global team and using a chatbot specific forwarding email.  Has anyone done this?

ACharpin
Participant | Diamond Partner

Urgent Need!! So complicated when you users are coming from all over the world and your staff is not always available and manage this manually is impossible.

ABischoff
Participant | Platinum Partner

There definitely needs to be a way to set hours for individual users so that you can tailor chatbot availability to a single user or team. 

Iffah
HubSpot Employee

Adding on to this thread for improved customization- It would be great if the availability settings message could be customized further based on specific chatflows.

ItaloLeiva
Member | Gold Partner

Agreed. We should be able to set different chat flows at differen times of the day and based on calendar availability.

Alexander007
Member

We need the ability for our users to be automatically set to available or not available at set times. This is a problem for us.

MariZanchetta
Contributor

Can't believe this idea has been submitted almost 4 years ago and still no response from Hubspot! it's a much needed feature, managing availability manually is a nightmare and waste of time.

trangnguyen
Participant

Yes, this is needed. Chat availability management so no chats are missed so we do not lose out on opportunities. Notifications arent the best. Time based or an automatic ping if a chat is still open after a specific amount of time would help too. Many times sales reps and support reps may jump on a separate call and forget to turn their availiabilty on or off and it can be easily forgotten to turn on/off availability to chat.