There should be a way to automatically route chats to specific team members based on a set schedule. For example, our agency has a client with a very specific schedule for "manning" their chat because they have a fairly small team. Here's what their schedule looks like:
Sunday - Closed
Monday - 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM: Team Member 1 manages chats.
Tuesday & Thursday - 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM: Team Member 2 manages chats. Team Member 3 is backup.
Wednesday - 8:00 AM - 7:00 PM
8:00 AM -12:00 PM: Team Member 1 manages chats. Team Member 2 is backup.
12:00 PM - 3:00 PM: Team Member 2 manages chats. Team Member 1 is backup.
3:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Team Member 3 manages chats. Team Member 2 is backup.
Friday & Saturday - 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Team Member 2 manages chats. Team Member 3 is backup.
12:00 - 3:00 PM: Team Member 3 manages chats. "Sorry Not Available" message appears if Team Member 3 can't take the chats because there is no backup on Saturdays after 12:00 PM.
Instead of using an if/then branch to route team members based on availability (e.g. team member is available or team member is not available assign chat to X team member), it'd be nice to route to specific team members based on specific hours and days of the week. This would alleviate the need for team members who do "man" a chat bot to manually set their status as available or away.
I have a similar use case, where our chat team has differing scheduling availability. Our HubSpot account is set in US/Canada Eastern Standard time, where the majority of our chat team works from. However, we have two chat team members that are in the UK, which is 5 hours ahead. The chat team members are automatically assigned a chat via roundrobin.
Oftentimes, all chat team members forget to manually toggle their availability status to off when they're done for the day. This is less of a problem for the North American ET team members, since the chatbot settings close it at 5PM.
However, it sometimes roundrobins to a UK team member after 12PM ET/5PM UK time. The UK team member is finished work, but the chatbot remains active for another 5 hours and can assign them a chat during that time. This can cause delays in response while a custom workflow alerts the other members that a chat visitor is waiting.
Having the ability to set hours of chat availability per team member would solve this problem. Alternatively, the ability to exclude specific team members from the roundrobin during specific hours would also work.
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