Set up your Shopify Inbox availability and automated first reply
To help manage your customer's expectations when they use your online store chat, you can set hours of availability and customize automatic first reply messages for conversations that your staff handle. Availability hours determine when your staff can respond and whether staff handoff is available. If your Inbox agent is set to Only when your staff is unavailable, then your availability hours determine whether new conversations are handled by your staff or the Inbox agent.
If the Inbox agent is set to handle all conversations and a customer asks to speak with a person, the behavior depends on your availability hours:
- During your availability hours, your staff receives the conversation.
- Outside of your availability hours, the customer receives your store's sender email address and can contact you by email.
Automatic first replies are sent only for conversations that your staff handle.
Set up your hours of availability
Your hours of availability determine when your staff can respond to chat messages. If your Inbox agent is set to Only when your staff is unavailable, then the Inbox agent handles new conversations that start outside of these hours. During your availability hours in this mode, your staff handle new conversations. By default, your hours of availability are set to always available. You can update your chat availability from your Shopify admin in the Inbox channel.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Inbox.
Click Chat settings, and then click Availability.
In the Hours section, do any of the following steps to set your availability:
- To set different availability for each day of the week that you're available to respond to online store chats, use the drop-down menus to select a start and end time for each day.
- To set your availability as always available for a specific day, click …, and then click Select all hours for this day.
- To set the same hours for all days of the week, set your hours for one of the days using the drop-down menus, click …, and then click Apply these hours to all days.
Click Save.
Set up first reply messages
You can set up two different automatic first reply messages for conversations that your staff handle, depending on whether the customer messages you during your hours of availability.
The During available hours message is sent to customers who start a staff-handled chat during the hours that you set as available. You can use this first reply to ask for any additional information that you need from your customer, and let them know when to expect a reply.
The Outside of available hours message is sent to customers who start a staff-handled chat outside of the hours that you set as available. If the Inbox agent is set to Only when your staff is unavailable, then new conversations that start outside of your availability hours are handled by the Inbox agent, and this first reply is not sent. Customers receive an AI response instead.
Turn on automatic first reply messages
From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Inbox.
Click Chat settings, and then click Availability.
In the Automated first reply section, click Turn on.
Customize your automated first reply messages
After you turn on automated first reply messages, you can customize the message that is displayed to customers when they start a new chat.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Inbox.
Click Chat settings, and then click Availability.
Do any of the following:
- To customize the message that's sent to customers during your available hours, click During available hours.
- To customize the message that's sent to customers outside of your available hours, click Outside of available hours.
In the Message text box, enter a message up to 2048 characters.
Click Save.