We are excited to introduce the launch of our new Freshworks Freshdesk Omni — an all-in-one, AI-first, omnichannel solution. This Suite combines conversational support and ticketing capabilities, powered by generative AI, to deliver outstanding customer and agent experiences.

If you are a Freshdesk Omnichannel customer and want to learn more and experience the new Freshworks Freshdesk Omni, please write to support@freshdesk.com.


Omnichannel Business hours are the hours during the day in which your support team is available to engage with your customers across channels.


With Omnichannel Business hours, you can 

  • Manage the working hours of your teams across tickets, chats, and phone channels. 

  • Get more control over your SLAs by determining when a ticket or chat is due. For example, if your team works from 7 am to 11 pm and a customer contacts you at 11:30 pm, the due timer doesn’t start until 7 am on the next business day.

  • Automate workflows, such as Auto-response for tickets, Offline Experience for chat, and Voicemail for Phone Call, when your team is offline.


Note: Omnichannel Business Hours is currently only available for customers who signed up after February 2021. For customers who signed up before February 2021, this will be made available in Q2 2021.



To set up new Business Hours:

  • Go to the Admin > Team > Business Hours

  • The default Business Hours are listed. You can edit this by clicking on the Edit button on the right.

  • To create new Business Hours, click on the New Business Hours button on the top right.

  • Give your Business Hours a name and a description. 

  • Select which Time Zone you want your Business Hours to follow from the drop-down menu.



  • You can create separate Business Hours for Tickets, Chat, and Phone channels.

  • To add Business Hours for a particular channel, click on that tab to expand it.

  • If your team is available round the clock on all days, click on 24 hrs x 7 days else click on Custom business hours.

  • Select the days of the week and time period your team will be working on.


  • If you want the same Business hours to be applied for chat and phone, click Copy to chat and phone on the top right corner.

  • For chat and phone channels, you can also add multiple business hours for the same day.



  • Please note that Omnichannel Business Hours can only be modified from your Freshdesk account. You can view your Business Hours from your Freshchat and Freshcaller accounts but not modify them.

 

If your team doesn't work on certain public or regional holidays, you can add those dates to your Business Hours as Holidays so they will automatically be considered as outside working hours. 


To add Holidays to your Business Hours: 

  • Click on the Holidays tab




  • You will see a list of holidays added (if any) to your Business Hours.

  • To add a new holiday, click on the Add Holidays button on the top right corner.

  • You'll now see two tabs - Exclusive Holidays and Regional Holidays

    • Exclusive Holidays lets you add custom dates that are not present in the Regional Holidays Calendar

    • Regional Holidays are a set of public holidays from your region

  • To add an exclusive holiday, click on the Exclusive holidays tab and enter the date and Name of the holiday

  • If you wish to add another holiday after this, check the Add another box.

  • After you are done, click on the Add button to add the Holiday.

  • To add a regional holiday to your list of holidays, click on the Regional holidays tab

  • Select your region from the drop-down

  • All regional holidays from your selected region are now added to your list of holidays

  • If you want to delete a particular date from the list of holidays, hover over the date and click on the Trash (delete) icon on the right

  • Please note that adding a set of regional holidays will overwrite all your current holidays.

After you are done, click on the Save button to save the holidays.