Working Hours for Conversation AI
This article explains how to configure Working Hours for your Conversation AI agents so they respond only during your business operating hours.
You'll learn how to set flexible schedules, choose which channels follow those hours, configure after-hours auto-replies, notify your team, and automatically follow up when business resumes.
Working Hours is available through HighLevel Labs. Enable the feature flag in Settings → Labs before configuring it for your agents.
What is Working Hours for Conversation AI?
Working Hours gives you control over when your Conversation AI agents actively respond to customers. Instead of replying 24/7, you can set specific working days and hours for each agent, choose which channels should follow those hours, and configure what happens when customers reach out after business hours.
This feature helps businesses align AI agent availability with their actual operating hours while still acknowledging and following up with customers who message outside those times.
Working Hours is optional. If you do not enable it, your agent continues responding at any time as usual.
Key Benefits
Working Hours provides several advantages for businesses that want more control over AI agent availability:
How Working Hours Operates
Working Hours controls when your AI agent actively responds based on your configured schedule. Here's how it functions:
The agent responds to customer messages on all configured channels according to your agent's settings.
The agent does not respond on channels included in the Working Hours schedule. Channels not included continue responding normally.
If a conversation started during working hours, the agent can continue replying after closing time until the conversation becomes inactive.
Working Hours is configured per agent, so different agents can have completely different schedules.
In Suggestive Mode, suggestions can still be generated after working hours for your team.
Agents can still be manually activated outside their Working Hours when needed via the conversation panel.
How to Configure Working Hours
Follow these steps to set up Working Hours for your Conversation AI agent:
Go to Settings → Labs and search for "Working Hours". Enable the feature flag.
Open AI Agents → Conversation AI. Select the agent you want to configure.
Go to the Deploy tab and select Working Hours.
Toggle Active Hours on to activate the Working Hours feature for this agent.
Choose which channels should follow the Working Hours schedule. Available channels include SMS, Email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Chat Widget, Live Chat, and TikTok. Channels not selected continue responding 24/7.
Select Contact Timezone to run the schedule based on each contact's local timezone, or Business Timezone to use your business timezone for all contacts.
Set the days and times when the agent should actively respond. You can set different hours for each day and add multiple time slots per day to accommodate breaks or split shifts.
Optionally, configure after-hours behavior including ongoing conversations, auto-replies, team notifications, contact tags, and follow-up messages. See the next section for details.
Click Save to apply the Working Hours configuration. Your agent will follow the configured schedule for the selected channels.
Your agent now follows the configured Working Hours for the selected channels.
After-Hours Options
Working Hours includes several optional features to help you manage customer interactions outside business hours:
Allow the agent to keep replying after closing time if a conversation started during working hours. The agent continues until the conversation becomes inactive.
Automatically acknowledge customers who message outside working hours. Add your own custom message and personalize it using supported custom values. The auto-reply is triggered once per closed period.
Send email notifications when customers message after hours. Choose recipients from admins, users, assigned users, selected team members, or custom email addresses. Notifications are triggered once per closed period.
Automatically add selected tags to contacts who message outside business hours. This makes it easier to identify, filter, and follow up with after-hours contacts. Tags are applied once per closed period.
Automatically send a follow-up message when business reopens if the customer has not received a response from the agent or a team member. This ensures no after-hours inquiries are left unattended.
The off-hours auto-reply, notifications, and contact tags are triggered once per closed period. Customers do not receive the same acknowledgement for every message they send after hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
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