Switch to bot when no agents available or outside office hours

[stinhambo]

I'm playing with the qualification bot that comes with Marketing Starter and there are a couple of things missing that I think should be offered before it's useful -

Switching between Messages and Bot depending on business hours/away status or time delay.

If I'm available, I'd like to speak to people, if I'm not (outside hours, I'm set to away or I haven't answered in 30 seconds), I'd like a bot to take over. Otherwise I'd miss out on an interesting lead because I wasn't available.

Giving the option to speak to someone and not forcing them to answer questions.
What if they're browsing, curious or just want to just ask a question? I'd like to offer this option to site visitors. Otherwise people could bounce and I would lose them.

[rentrax]

it would be great to have control over the bot operation schedule (i.e. bots function only on weekdays 5PM to 9AM the following day and on weekends)

[Onur]

This already exists.

Bots wors as part of the conversations inbox / live chat app.

If you want to set the availability you can do it from your conversations inbox.

Here are the three screens that you need to use:

[Onur]

Let me know if you need any further help, ill be happy to guide you through it.

Onur

[rentrax]

Hi Onur,

Thanks for the reply but I think I was unclear. I am not interested in setting availability for the chat module- I want it to work 24/7 but off business hours I would like the bot to take over. Your solution limits all conversation to business hours regardless if it's a bot or live person. Am I missing something?

Thanks,

G

[StacieB]

Agreed.  It would be great to have automatic bots that respond one way during office hours and switch over to another boy during non-business hours.  Have it on a schedule.  Most small companies don't have 24hr live chat available. 

[stinhambo]

Thanks Onur but your example only controls the chat function in it's entirety. I'd like the bot to step in immediately outside business hours or if my calendar says I'm busy.

[ddemaio]

Currently, there is no setting that allows you to schedule your chat bot based on the availability of your human reps. Ideally, there would be a single option to choose that would set your chat bot as available any time that a human isn't readily available. 

I know that you can set your bot to hand off conversations to a rep, but I would rather have the initial interaction be with a human first, and if not available, immediately with a bot. 

[ddemaio]

I spent way too long trying to unravel this one. It seems like having your bot automatically take over whenever a human is not available to chat would be a highly sought-after function. I don't need a bot to pass off conversations to me, I just want a bot to field questions and requests when a human can't. Alas, changing the chat availability (a la Onur), changes it for everything, not just the bot (or just the human chatters).

I could see how it would be difficult to have the bot take over instead of the automated away message–you're combining two chats into one–but to set the availabilty based on when your team isn't there seems really simple. Separate chat availability settings for the bot. That's all. 

This would be huge if it worked that way... Fingers crossed. Happy to find this idea. 

[Jayson]

I was also looking for this!

Switching between Messages and Bot depending on business hours/away status or time delay.

Do I have to manually always switch the bot on when I leave the office and then switch off when I come to work???

[StacieB]

Jayson, that is what I am doing, and unfortunately I don't always remember, even with a huge post it on my computer. And the App doesn't give access to inbox settings. . . the app is just worthless. Sorry, my opinion! Hopefully the offer this feature soon! Either scheduled bots OR the ability to access inbox setting from the app. 

[clioi]

yes @Jayson , that's how it works at the moment unfortunately! I spoke to HubSpot support MANY times about this and still no progress...

[wagnerbenh]

 I was also expecting this to work so that you could have a bot automatically step in outside of business hours or when chat agents are unavailable.

[Hawk-Steve]

+ 1 Vote from me.

I currently have to have 2 different inboxes, one set up with a bot that is only available outside business hours. The section inbox and chat is available during business hours. Sorry, this was wrong, as bots are always active 24/7 regardless of availability. The next workaround may be setting up 2 targeted messages under 1 inbox, toggling them at the start of business hours and at the end of business hours.

Hardly ideal, 2 different inboxes to monitor and set up.

• All we need is the ability to set availability for the bot OR
• Allow targeted messages within an inbox to have availability set per message.

[jrwthetreegroup]

Yes please. If somebody is 'available' it would be good to have the option to automatically turn off the Bot then when nobody is available for the Bot to automatically turn on.

[AleBlu]

I strongly agree with the idea and already upvoted it.

I think the easiest way would be to have at least the possibility to set the timing for the targeted messages.

In this way we could:

• Set up different targeted messages connected to different bots based upon office hours / out-of-office hours, so that for example we can have 1 bot with a specific flow that foresees an agent handoff if needed and 1 bot with another flow, without an agent handoff at the end but collecting the visitor's data so that we can contact him/her later (this is what I would personally need)
• Set up a targeted message only for out-of-office hours so that it's connected to the bot, while during office hours the agents immediately enter the chat

Would this idea fit everyone's needs?

In this case I don't think it should be too difficult for HubSpot to release this feature, we can already target the pages where we want the targeted message to be shown, so only a "timing" rule should be added...

[jmervis]

this seems so clearly necessary to build logic about when to use the bot and when to use a human.

[Britespan]

We want to run multiple bots on the same chat log/inbox, but choose time frames for each bot. So the same chat log would be running 24 hours a day, but during office hours, we have one bot, and out of office or holidays, we have another ,bot. 

But we never have to manually turn them on or off becasue they are running from the same inbox. 

This seems like low hanging fruit for HubSpot, something they could do pretty easily that would make the chat log a lot more useful for companies. 

One of the main purposes of a chat log is to catch visitors when there is no live person for them to communicate with. 

[andrew_thomas]

This function is an absolute must. 

[kbarrera]

+1 here. 

I was getting ready to literally hit the "go live switch" on everything I set up for my team only to find out that I can't simply have the bot run when no agents are available or during scheduled after-hours periods. 

Glad to see it's in planning - any ETA or beta we can test?