Question about 'Blackout Hours' & Scheduled Automated Emails

[SSayed]

Hi all! 

I had a couple of questions (2) regarding the available functionality of HubSpot, namely regarding automated emails and business hours. 

1. Is it possible to set some sort of a 'schedule' for automated email responses?

For example, my team & I are hoping to create an automated email to be sent out whenever a customer reaches us on a holiday, letting them know that we are out. We of course already know which holidays we will be closed for well in advance, so we would like to create the email and have it sent out as an automatic response to any inbound messages on each holiday. 

Is there a way to set this up and schedule such an email in advance? Can we create an email and schedule it as an automated response to be sent out only on specific dates? 

2. Is it possible to somehow incorporate 'blackout hours' for any tickets received outside of business hours?

Currently, our organization measures metrics such as 'Ticket time to close' and 'Initial ticket response time'. However, this data is skewed when we receive inquiries outside of business hours and on the weekends.

For example, if we receive an inquiry on Friday at 7 PM, after hours, and we get to it first thing Monday morning, technically our initial response time should only be counted starting from Monday morning, rather than Friday evening. But right now, by the time we get to the ticket on Monday, the ticket shows as it has been open for 2.5 days already, which is inaccurate for the data we are trying to collect. 

Is there a way to "block out" hours/days outside of our operating hours so that this time is not calculated with our metrics, ensuring higher accuracy in our data? 

We would like to exclude weekends, and any time after 5 PM PT on weekdays. This way, our metrics are only affected by the time that we are operating. Is this possible? 

If any clarification is needed on either of these two questions, please let me know. I sincerely appreciate the help!

Thank you all! 

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @SSayed, 

Thank you for reaching out to the Community! 

Are you using the HubSpot Conversations inbox to manage your customer communication? The autoresponder function is currently not available in Conversations, but I found this feature request in our Ideas forum where other users have already requested this function. It'd be great if you could support the idea with an upvote. Thank you!

Depending on which email client you're using, you might be able to set up an autoresponder directly in the client. 

Regarding 'blackout hours' for any tickets received outside of business hours: I found this Community article which might also offer a workaround for the autoresponder function. @karstenkoehler explains in the thread how you could create two workflows for your tickets, one that runs within working hours and one outside of working hours.

I also wanted to invite a couple of other subject matter experts to this conversation to see if they have any advice: 

Hi @franksteiner79, @jolle, do you have any tips for @SSayed? Thank you!

Cheers
Mia, Community Team