A guide to setting up and optimizing Gorgias business hours

It’s 8 PM, your support team has been logged off for hours, but customer questions are still rolling in. If you're growing, especially across time zones, that's probably a familiar scene. Figuring out how to manage your team's availability is more than just logistics, it’s about giving your customers a great experience, even when you’re technically "closed."

This is where a tool like Gorgias comes in handy. It's a popular helpdesk for ecommerce brands, and it has a built-in feature called Business Hours designed to help with this exact problem. This guide will walk you through setting it up, using it effectively, and even getting around its limitations to offer support that feels 24/7.

What are Gorgias business hours?

So, what exactly is the Gorgias business hours feature? In short, it’s a setting that tells your helpdesk when your support team is online and available versus when they’re offline. It’s basically the digital "open for business" sign on your support department's door.

Its main purpose is to manage a few key automations based on your team's schedule. When you set your hours, you’re telling Gorgias how to handle:

• The online/offline status of your Gorgias Chat widget.

• How incoming phone calls are routed (to a live person or to voicemail).

• Whether certain automated Rules should kick in.

Setting your business hours is the first step to building automated workflows that match your team’s actual availability, so customers always know what to expect.

A step-by-step guide to configuring your Gorgias business hours

Gorgias gives you a couple of ways to set up your schedule: default hours for your whole helpdesk, and custom hours for specific channels. This is super helpful if you're juggling different teams or have channels with their own unique schedules.

Setting up default Gorgias business hours

This will be your main schedule, the one that applies to all your integrations unless you decide to set up a custom one.

1. From your Gorgias dashboard, head to Settings > Ticket Management > Business Hours.

2. Look for Default Business Hours and click the pencil icon to edit.

3. Choose your primary timezone. This is important, so double-check that it’s right for your main team.

4. Click + Add Time Range to set the days and times your team is working. You can add more than one range if you have split shifts or different weekend hours.

5. Hit Save Changes.

Using custom Gorgias business hours for different integrations

The custom hours feature is great for businesses with more complex support needs. Maybe you have a team in Europe and another in North America, or perhaps phone support is only available in the afternoons while chat is open all day.

1. On the same Business Hours settings page, find the Custom Business Hours section and click + Add Custom Business Hours.

2. Give your schedule a name that makes sense, like "EU Chat Support" or "US Phone Hours."

3. Set the timezone and schedule for this specific team or channel.

4. Under Integrations, search for and pick the channels this schedule should apply to (like a specific chat widget or voice integration). Any channel you don't assign here will just use the default hours you already set up.

5. Click Add Business Hours to save it.

Beyond the basics: Strategic ways to use Gorgias business hours

Alright, you’ve set your hours. That’s step one. The real magic happens when you use those hours to build smarter workflows that make your customers' lives easier.

A simple rule can completely change the off-hours experience. When a customer messages you, Gorgias checks if it's within your business hours. If it is, the ticket is handled as usual. If not, a rule can automatically tag the ticket as "Off-Hours" and fire off an auto-reply letting them know you'll get back to them in the morning. This little automation manages expectations and keeps your inbox tidy for the next day.

Here are a few ways to put your business hours to work:

Automate off-hours responses with Gorgias business hours

You can create a Rule that triggers anytime a ticket is created OUTSIDE BUSINESS HOURS. Use this to send a reply that sets expectations, like, "Thanks for your message! Our team is offline right now, but we’re back at 9 AM EST and will get to this then." You can also have the rule tag these tickets with "overnight-inquiry" so your team can easily find and tackle them first thing in the morning.

Manage your channel availability using Gorgias business hours

Your business hours automatically control your chat widget. When you're offline, the live chat option disappears and is replaced by a contact form. This is a small thing, but it stops customers from waiting around for a live reply that isn't coming. For phone support, calls get sent straight to voicemail, so you don't miss anything.

Improve your reporting and SLAs with Gorgias business hours

By looking at the tickets that come in during and outside of business hours, you can start to see patterns. Are you getting slammed with chats the second you close? That kind of data can help you make better decisions about staffing and scheduling to keep up with what your customers actually need.

Limitations of native Gorgias business hours (and how to solve them)

Look, Gorgias’s rules are a solid starting point. But they're reactive, not proactive. They can tell a customer you're closed, but they can't actually help them. This creates a gap, especially after hours, where a simple "we'll get back to you" just isn't enough.

The offline experience feels like a dead end

The standard offline mode for Gorgias Chat is just a contact form. It doesn't solve the customer's problem; it just creates another ticket for your team. For the customer, it’s a frustrating dead end. They showed up with a question and left with a confirmation that they have to wait.

The AI Solution: This is where a good AI agent can completely change the dynamic. Instead of hitting a wall, customers can talk to an AI that gives them instant, useful answers. An AI agent from eesel AI can connect to all your knowledge sources, past tickets, help articles, internal Google Docs, you name it, to resolve issues right then and there. It turns your offline hours from a waiting game into a 24/7 self-service portal that actually works.

Rule-based automation isn't very smart

Gorgias rules operate on simple logic; they can't figure out what a customer actually wants. Someone asking, "Do you ship to Australia?" outside of business hours gets the same generic "we're offline" reply as a high-value customer messaging in a panic, "My checkout is broken, and I can't place my $500 order."

The AI Solution: An AI agent from eesel AI knows the difference. It can instantly answer the shipping question, but it also knows to immediately escalate the urgent checkout issue to an on-call team member. That kind of intelligence means you won't miss out on a critical sale, even in the middle of the night. Best of all, it plugs right into your existing Gorgias helpdesk, so you don't have to switch up the tools your team already knows and uses.

With eesel AI, you get a few key advantages:

• Go live in minutes: Forget about long sales calls and complicated setups. You can connect eesel AI to your helpdesk and launch it yourself in a few minutes.

• Unify all your knowledge: eesel AI doesn't just skim your help center. It learns from your past tickets, internal wikis in Confluence, Google Docs, and more to get a full picture of your business.

• Test with confidence: Before you turn the AI on for your customers, you can run a simulation on thousands of your past tickets. This gives you a clear forecast of your automation rate, so you know exactly what to expect.

Gorgias pricing

To get the business hours feature and other automation tools in Gorgias, you'll need to be on at least the Basic plan. Their more advanced tools, like their native AI Agent, are available on higher-tier plans and are often priced based on how many interactions they handle.

Here’s a quick look at their plans:

Note: This table is based on publicly available info. Prices and features can change. For the latest, it's always best to check the Gorgias pricing page.

It’s worth noting that this kind of model, which often scales with how many tickets you handle, can sometimes lead to unpredictable costs. We designed eesel AI's pricing to be more straightforward, based on features and overall capacity, not per-resolution fees. The goal is to avoid any surprise bills at the end of a busy month.

Combine Gorgias business hours with AI for true 24/7 support

At the end of the day, Gorgias business hours is a must-use feature. It gives you the structure you need to manage your team's schedule and automate basic replies.

But if you want to provide a customer experience that doesn't just clock out at 5 PM, rule-based systems alone won't cut it. The real sweet spot is using Gorgias for its awesome helpdesk features and then layering on an intelligent tool like eesel AI to handle things when your team is offline. You get the structure and the smarts.

Get started with intelligent automation today

Ready to make your offline hours work for you? Stop letting simple questions pile up overnight and start giving customers the instant answers they're looking for.

You can connect eesel AI to your helpdesk in just a few minutes and see what intelligent automation can really do for your team.