Business hours in Sparkcentral

Business hours are the scheduled hours that agents are available to answer customers. These can be set for each channel. Settings business hours allows you to enable auto responder scripts for during and outside of business hours and also helps provides insight into team performance. If you don't configure business hours, Sparkcentral assumes that your business is available 24/7.

To set business hours:

1. Go to Admin settings, expand Channels and business hours, and then select Business hours.
2. On the Business hours page, select Add business hours.
3. Enter a name, select a time zone, hours, and holidays, and apply channels as needed.

First response time

The business hours you configure are factored in to your First Response Time calculation (in Settings, select Reports, and then select SLA). They are also included in the Resolved Conversations and Open Conversations data exports.

First response time is calculated for human agents only, not virtual agents.

Sample scenarios

Say your business hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM.

1. Customer sends a message during business hours

• 10:00 AM Inbound message from a customer
• 10:05 AM Agent responds
• The first response time in this example is 5 minutes.

2. Customer sends a message outside business hours

• 8:00 AM Inbound message from a customer
• 9:20 AM Agent responds
• The first response time in this example is 20 minutes.

3. Customer sends a message during business hours and a virtual agent sends the initial response

• 11:00 AM Inbound message from a customer
• 11:01 AM Virtual Agent responds
• 11:02 AM Virtual Agent moves the conversation to the New queue
• 11:30 AM Agent responds
• The first response time in this example is 28 minutes.