How to setup business hours auto responder

Video guide

Learn how to automate customer communications based on your business hours. In this guide you'll learn:

• Why automated responses help set customer expectations
• Setting up your business hours, time zones, and holidays
• Selecting and customizing autoresponse templates
• Creating conditional flows for in and outofoffice responses
• Configuring triggers and agent assignments
• Testing and publishing your autoresponder

Step-by-step guide

This automation helps you professionally manage customer expectations by sending custom responses during and outside business hours, while efficiently routing conversations to your team.

Step 1: Open Admin Settings

• Launch the Bird app and go to Admin settings.
• This is where you'll define your business hours and set up the auto-responder.

Step 2: Define Your Business Hours

1. Navigate to the Support tab.
2. Click AI, Rules & Automation, then select Business Hours.
3. Click Add Business to create a new business hours schedule.
4. Give your business hours a unique name so you can easily identify it later.

Step 3: Set Your Schedule

1. Use the toggle to manually adjust business hours for each day.
2. To add a holiday, click Add Holiday.
3. Enter a name and select the date using the calendar icon (e.g., April 18, 2025).
4. Repeat to add more holidays or click the trash can icon to remove any unnecessary ones.
5. Click Save to finalize your business hours setup.

Step 4: Create the Auto-Responder Workflow

1. Head over to the Workflows product.
2. Go to Template Flows and select Business Hours Auto-Responder.
3. Click Save to my library to begin editing the workflow.

Step 5: Configure Your Flow

1. Switch to Tree view for a clearer layout of your journey.
2. In the Trigger details panel, configure the channel and participants.
3. Select the Business Hours step and choose the schedule you created earlier.

Step 6: Edit Auto-Responder Messages

1. After applying your business hours, continue to the next step.
2. Customize the message that will be sent during business hours and another for outside of business hours.
3. You can edit message content directly from the step details panel.

Step 7: Finalize and Launch

1. Review your setup and make any final adjustments.
2. Once you're ready, activate the workflow to start automatically responding to customers based on your availability.