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A chatbot after hours: what to reply at night and on weekends while no operators are around

November 4, 2026 · Command CHBT · Flows, Conversations

Half of the messages to business chats arrive in the evening, at night and on weekends — when people finally get to their own errands. If at that time the bot replies “Passing you to an operator” and goes silent until morning, the customer feels abandoned. If it replies “We work from 9 to 6” and nothing else, they go to a competitor. Here is how to separate working and non-working hours in CHBT, what to honestly reply at night and how not to lose a request until morning.

What a bot should do after hours

Reply right away and honestly: “We are offline right now and will reply tomorrow after 10:00”.
Solve what can be solved without a person: prices, address, opening hours, frequent questions, booking a free slot.
Collect a request: what is needed and how to get in touch, so in the morning the manager starts with everything ready.
Not promise what will not happen: “An operator will join shortly” at night is the worst option.

How the bot knows what time it is

The Condition block has two fields for this: Time — the current hour from 0 to 23, and Day of the week — from 0 to 6, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday. You can compare with =, ≠, >, <, ≥, ≤.

Important: the hour and day are taken from CHBT server time, not from the customer’s time zone. If your business and customers are in another time zone, shift the boundaries and check them in the test chat — Check flow shows which branch the bot goes to right now.

Working hours in one branch

All rules inside one Condition branch must be met at the same time. So working hours are easy to describe with one branch of four rules:

Time ≥ 10
Time < 20
Day of the week ≥ 1
Day of the week ≤ 5

That is weekdays from 10:00 to 19:59. Everything else — evening, night and weekends — goes to Otherwise. If you work on Saturdays from 11 to 16, add a second branch: Day of the week = 6, Time ≥ 11, Time < 16.

A flow: a person in the daytime, a request at night

The customer writes, the bot answers frequent questions with buttons.
If a person is needed — a Condition on working hours.
The working branch: a Message “Connecting a manager, we will reply within 15 minutes” → the Operator block. The conversation goes to Waiting for an answer, the bot goes silent in it, operators get a push.
Otherwise: a Message “We are offline right now. Describe your question and leave your phone — we will reply tomorrow after 10:00” → Collect data with Phone validation → Action: tag night-request and CRM deal → Message “Thank you! We have your request”.

In the morning the manager opens Contacts by the night-request tag or the pipeline in CRM and starts with everything ready: what is needed and how to get in touch.

If there are operators, but not always

Often the boundary is not “night/day” but “someone from the team is around”. For this, each team member in Conversations has the Online or Away status, and automatic assignment gives a conversation handed over to a person to the online operator with the fewest open conversations. More in the article on conversation distribution.

If a conversation arrived at an inconvenient time and there is no answer yet, the operator can press Snooze — for an hour, three hours, until tomorrow or until Monday. At the set time the conversation comes back with a reminder, and if the customer writes earlier — right away.

A morning message instead of silence

The bot took a request at night — in the morning the customer expects a follow-up. If the manager cannot reply right away, a Delay helps: after the night request put a Delay for the right time and a Message “Good morning! A manager is already looking at your question”. Delay options are 1 min, 5 min, 30 min, 1 hour, 1 day or your own value in seconds.

Keep in mind that the delay counts from the moment of the request, not until a specific hour: a request at 23:00 with a 10-hour delay gets the message at 9:00, while one at 3:00 gets it at 13:00. For an exact “morning” it is more convenient if the operator sends the morning message, or a broadcast by the night-request tag.

Holidays and unusual days

The Condition has no holiday calendar — it only knows the hour and the day of the week. For holidays the simplest way is to temporarily change the text in the Otherwise branch and extend it: for example, for the New Year holidays put a separate “days off” branch first and turn it off after the holidays. Do not forget to put everything back — a common mistake is “We are on holiday until January 8” hanging until spring.

Checking before launch

Open Check flow and go through the path to the Condition — the test chat shows which branch fired right now.
To check another branch, temporarily shift the hour boundary so the current time falls into it, then put it back.
In the test chat the Delay does not wait — the step is skipped at once, so you can see the whole chain after the delay.
Make sure the Otherwise branch has no Operator block without a warning: at night it would send the conversation to an empty Waiting for an answer.

What the bot can solve on its own while everyone sleeps

The night branch is not only “leave your phone”. Often the person needs an answer, not a manager, and the bot can give it right away:

Prices and terms. Buttons “How much”, “Delivery”, “Warranty” with short answers cover most night questions.
Address and opening hours. Trivial, but a frequent evening question: “are you open tomorrow?”.
Selection. A quiz of three to five questions picks a service or product — in the morning the manager gets not “I want to know” but a ready request.
AI answers based on your materials. On plans with AI, the AI node answers questions in its own words and at any time. At night it is especially useful: the person gets an answer right away, not in the morning.

The rule is simple: everything that can be answered without a person, the bot answers at night too. A person is needed for decisions and exceptions — those we leave until morning.

Texts for the night branch: examples

A good night reply honestly says when a person will be available and suggests what to do now. A few options for different tasks:

Service and repair: “Our technicians are off shift right now. Describe the problem and leave your phone — the administrator will call tomorrow from 9:00 and set a visit time”.
Online store: “Managers will reply in the morning, but you can place an order right now — choose a product in the menu”.
Salon and clinic: “Booking is open around the clock: choose a service and a convenient time, the confirmation will come in the morning”.
Online school: “Your curator will reply during working hours, and here are answers to frequent questions about the course…”.
B2B: “Thank you for your request! Send the task in two or three words — a manager will prepare a proposal by 11:00”.

Avoid “we will reply soon” without a time. “Soon” at night is a promise you will not keep.

Different channels — one logic

If the bot works in Telegram, MAX, VK and on the website at once, one night logic is needed for all channels — the flow is shared. But it is sometimes worth varying the texts: on the website a person expects an answer “here and now”, while in a messenger they will calmly wait until morning. The Condition has a Channel field: you can make a separate night branch for the website chat, for example offering to leave an email, and in messengers simply promise a reply in the same chat in the morning.

How to see how many requests arrive at night

The night-request tag in the night branch gives a simple metric: open Contacts, filter by the tag — and you will see how many people wrote after hours and left a contact. If the share is noticeable, it is an argument to extend operators’ working hours or add an evening shift. If it is almost zero, the night branch can be simplified to one honest message.

Look at the morning too: how many night requests the manager handled before lunch. A night request answered at 16:00 is almost as bad as a lost one.

Help: conditions and branches Conversations and operators Bot or operator: handing over a conversation Flow editor